The Butterfly Effect
by Sarafina Knowles
Summary: Something has happened to Quinn Fabray, and she won't speak up. Kurt Hummel is there to be her voice.
1. The Man in the Moon

It is the first day of two hundred and seventy.

I wake up slowly, half-resting between reality and dreams because I don't want to think about what I am waking up _for_. Between my cracked eyelids I see the soft pink pastels of my room. I remember going to the paint store with my mom, picking out that particular shade because of its name. _First Kiss._

Door opens. My shoulders tense deeper into the blankets that protect me.

"It's time to wake up, love. First day of school."

My mother's voice is soft, but loud enough to reach my ears. I try in vain to plug my ears with the soft cloth, but I can still hear her. Should I pretend to be asleep? Steal a few more seconds of peace. But no. I make a mumbling noise in the back of my throat, push myself out of my fortress.

"Breakfast is ready. I even bought orange juice, your favorite."

I am relieved when she disappears. Free to rip off my skin and look in the mirror, see the damaged doll that looks back. I touch my lips, thinking _first kiss first kiss. _No, not there. I must stay away from that place. _That place that place._

I put on clothes, like a robot forced to wear a human outfit. The happy yellow shade of my dress leaves a smooshy, garish feeling in my gut. Yellow used to be my favorite color. I don't know what my favorite color is anymore. Maybe I should turn emo, my favorite color black, my bangs cut crookedly across my forehead. I pin my bangs in half and wonder what the World would think.

I go downstairs, I eat breakfast. My parents are there waiting for me, my father all smiles and "Ready for your first day?" and my mother all "You look darling in that dress, Quinn."

Quinn. Quinn Quinn Quinn. _Quinn.  
_

"Lucy."

I look around in surprise to see who said that, before realizing I said it. Lucy. My real name. Lucy

Quinn. Why did I say that?

"What?"

"I want to be called Lucy this year. Not Quinn."

My parents exchange Looks. It's never a good thing when parents exchange a Look. It means they're communicating telepathically. It means they're frowning, they're worried, they're surprised. All of the above. It's a bad thing. I kick myself, tell myself to shut up.

"Whatever you want, love," my mother says, but it's not whatever I want. I know they'll call me

Quinn anyways.

I drive to school. The drive feels short, even though I live a good fifteen minutes away. I don't want to do this. I have no idea what's going to happen. I wish I could just drive and drive and drive, all day long, and never go to school. I could run away. That would be a story worthy of a news report. _Rich Fabray girl heads for the hills, parents buy a mannequin to replace her._

As I glide into the McKinley parking-lot, people watch me. I've never felt self-conscious about my car before, but now I'm thinking I'm the stupidest girl in the world for asking for a bright-red, cherry-red, apple-red punch buggy for my birthday. I'm the most obvious car, a kiss of red in a sea of rusted grays and hit-a-mailbox blues. I see some kids punching each other as my car drives by.

Ha ha.

Punch buggy no punch back.

I get out of the car, walk alone into the front doors. I keep my eyes averted, though I can feel _theirs _burning straight through me. I tell myself to move, _move move move. _Faster, pull out my schedule, read what I've already memorized. _Locker 413. _Thirteen. Bad luck? Good luck? Does the four cancel out the bad luck? I don't know.

I almost make it, almost, almost, but some of the cheerleaders corner me. I don't know how they find me like this. I think Sylvester has a built-in radio in all of their ears but mine, tells us our locations at any given point. Maybe she's even chipped us, like we did to my dead dog. Well, he was alive when we chipped him.

"Hey, Quinn!"

I almost keep walking, pretend I'm deaf, wishing I was, maybe I can pretend I lost my hearing over the course of a few weeks. But I have to turn around. My spine forces me to turn three hundred and sixty degrees until I'm facing Santana and Brittany.

"Quinn, where the hell have you been? We've been trying to call you ever since Rachel's lame-ass

party. That was over three weeks ago."

I swallow hard. Think think think, fast faster fastest. There's no good excuse. I've been ignoring my only friends and they know it. Well Santana knows it, Brittany doesn't really know anything.

"I'm sorry," I say, even though I'm not.

Santana stands there, an eyebrow raised. It makes her look angry. Her head is cocked, her hair is pulled into a curled ponytail. It flicks back and forth like a horse tail swatting at flies every few seconds.

"That's all you have to say for yourself?" she inquires, her voice remarkably like a growl.

"What else should I say for you?" I ask flatly. I know immediately it was the wrong thing to say.

"After Rachel's party, you totally dip out on us and we don't hear from you for _weeks_. Nobody has.

For all we know you're dead. There's rumors, and people are talking... I don't know what to believe.

Now it's the first day and you're different."

Different. Diff. Er. Ent. I don't know what that means anymore.

"You wouldn't understand," I say, voice shaking. "You weren't there. You didn't see it. You were drinking, drunk, having fun. Being a teenager. I wasn't. People are talking but they always talk. They don't know anything. If you're my friend, you'll ask me what's wrong. Please ask me."

But I don't say those things. In my head, the movie I imagine as my life, I say those things and then she asks what's wrong. I tell her, and emotional music plays, and then the credits roll. Not to be continued, possibly to be a sequel if it makes enough money. But this isn't in my head. It's outside my head. And outside my head, I just stand there.

Brittany, who's been quiet the whole time (probably trying to piece together what we're talking about) suddenly talks. "Quinn, did you cut your hair? It looks shorter."

Santana refocuses on me. She realizes that Brit is right, that my angelic golden locks have been chopped off. She wonders how she didn't notice this immediately, maybe she thought my hair was tied back and hidden behind my angelic head. She is confused.

"What the hell is wrong with you, Quinn?" Santana asks vehemently. That's a great word, isn't it? _Vehemently. _It was a vocab word once for that one teacher in that one English class.

I stare at her, wonder if we were ever really friends anyways. Most of our friendship was long days at cheer camp, sweaty ponytails and gossip and competition. A part of me never even liked her, and now I realize I don't like her at all. I can't look at her another second.

I think she's cussing at me as I turn away, but it's like I have a remote to the world and I've just clicked the mute button. I walk through the silenced hallways, watching mouths flap and feet walk and lockers slam but hearing nothing.

It's not until I stop at my locker, at locker 413, that I decide it's bad luck after all.

There's some people gathered like safari animals flock to a watering hole, and teachers stare for a second before calling the janitor. I stand among the animals, reading the five letter word written in red marker across my locker.

WHORE.

The sound of the world shattering is oddly quiet. At first it's like a far-off rumbling, a train maybe, and then it gets louder. It rips everything apart as it approaches until finally you're the last thing in its way and it _screams _as everything is destroyed.

My legs keep walking even though I'm locked in place, still staring at that word. Maybe they won't see me. Maybe if I pretend I'm invisible, I'll cease to exist.

The bell rings. I can hear it, breaking through my mute button and hurting my ears. It's a godsend. It  
gives me a place to be in this shuffle of gawking students, rumoring students, whispering staring

students. The buzzing sound of angry bees grows louder in my head.

My first bell is advanced placement literature. Why am I here? I think I used to like words. Words

put together, thousands of them, to form a story. Books that we study, stare at, contemplate, rip apart in the hunt for symbolism and metaphors and more isms and ors. I sit in the back, a change of pace. I used to always sit in the front.

The teacher is Mr. O' Connors. He says that literature is a form of escapism, a way for the human mind to retreat to a world that doesn't have them in it, and therefore doesn't have their problems in it. He is unlike other teachers in that he doesn't waste time with horrible icebreakers and introductions and pamphlets and _lets go around the room and say one thing about yourself_. He dives right in. I'm not sure if I like it or not.

When Mr. O' Connors sees my backpack, still clutched behind me since I deigned to break into my whorelocker, he says it's against school rules to carry a backpack, but since it's the first day he doesn't mind, as long as it's in a locker tomorrow. I nod, keep my face to my desk, face warming when I feel the millions of faces staring at me. I was hidden until he called me out. I hate him for this.

He then goes through the names of everyone, which thankfully takes the attention off of me because it's oh-so-hysterical to watch teachers accidentally butcher names on the first day of school. Giggles and howls of come from the peanut gallery.

Then.

"Lucy Fabray?"

Silence.

Mr. O' Connors looks up from his list of student names. "Lucy Fabray?" he repeats.

I don't want to raise my hand. I don't want to claim ownership to that name. I sit there, facing the backs of heads until they begin to turn around. Before I look look deaf or something I raise my hand. I don't correct him, though. Maybe I'll go by Lucy after all.

"Kurt Hummel?"

"Here."

I stiffen. His voice is high-pitched, somewhat distant as if halfway across the room. I don't look at him. I wonder if he looked over at me when my name was called.

The last thing O' Connors does before the sheep are herded to their second bell is put us in assigned seats. Assigned seats, groans, unhappiness. Separated from your best friends, your group, forced to sit with that weirdo so-and-so just because his/her last name is closest to your last name on the alphabet. Stupid stupid stupid. It only takes me a second to realize who I'm going to be sitting next to all year. _Abcdefgh..._

I end up in a seat towards the back of the room, which is okay. I watch out of the corner of my eye as Kurt Hummel comes and sits down right behind me. _Alphabetical order stupid stupid stupid. Who came up with alphabetical order anyways. They need to be gunned down._

My back is rigid for the rest of class. I sit very still, daring not to breath too much in case I call too much attention to myself and they can all hear my thudding heart. _Thud thud thud. _Like a heavy rock pounding back and forth in my chest. It hurts.

He's right behind me. I can feel him looking at the back of my head, but I can't do anything about it. I can't think about him because then I think about the summer and then I think about Rachel's party. And then something malfunctions and I can no longer form a thought. My brain is going haywire. I should call a brain repairman.

Does he remember? I wonder. Does he remember it as well as I do? Has he forgotten, like I've tried to? I like to imagine that after it happened, Kurt simply forgot about the entire incident and so sitting behind me was no big deal to him because I'm just another stranger.

But we aren't strangers. We aren't. Not after what happened.

_What does he know? Did I tell him anything? Mumble in my sleep, half-drunken rambles? Screams and tears turning into words that he could understand despite a creeping feeling of horror?_

He knows nothing. He remembers nothing. He helped me in a time of need, and we have both forgotten about it. This is what I will tell myself, over and over again, in order to remain sane in Advanced Placement Literature First Bell With Mr. O' Connors.

The bell rings, and I disappear.

* * *

**Here's the thing...**

When I started writing "The Butterfly Effect" about a year ago, it was fun. I loved exploring the relationship between these two dynamic characters. But then something happened, and it changed. It was no longer fun, the characters weren't what I wanted them to be. Quinn was too evil, Kurt was flat as a piece of paper, and I wasn't doing the story justice.

If you're a new reader this probably makes no sense, but if you're an old reader you know what I'm talking about. I was not happy with the direction it was heading, and I was going to just delete it.

But after you put so much time into something, it's hard to give it up. So instead of deleting the story that had gotten out of control, I went back. I changed everything that was wrong with the old story, and it became this.

This is a brand new take on "The Butterfly Effect", and I hope to succeed in places where the old story did not. It's an entirely new way to tell Quinn's pregnancy story, the kind of story I've always wanted to tell.

Thank you for taking the time to read my rambles, and thank you again to all of my readers!


	2. Centaurs Waving Goodbye

Day One goes by fast. It's like I'm relaxed in a theater, head resting on the chair, watching Day One play out on the screen before me. I don't like what I see, but it's not like I can get a refund, so I might as well stick around and see how it ends.

Day One does not end well.

People are still trying to figure out if they should avoid me or not. Several people that I was friends with last year hesitate when they see me. Shall I stay or shall I go? They go. None of them stopped to ask why my hair was so short. I could hear them thinking it, though.

Lunch is bad, bad, bad. I spent the entire morning not talking to my peers, and now I am locked in a room with them. I've been told that depression is connected to lack of appetite, but in my case I can't stop eating. I find food, stuff it deep within me, and hide until lunch is over.

The afternoon is like the morning. The five-letter word has been rewritten on my locker, and now my lovely peers have made up their minds about me, evident in the way my books are knocked out of my hands and people whisper as I pass by.

Santana doesn't try to talk to me again. It's hard to say what she's told the other cheerleaders, but I can assume that it wasn't nice because they aren't talking to me. A small part of me wants to do something before Day Two begins.

But the damage has already been done.

My car has been teepeed. I stand there in the parking-lot, looking at my cute-as-a-button car. The white stripes of toilet paper seem to be never-ending, fluttering gently in the September wind. I have no choice but to rip it all off and get in, fast, before they pounce. I don't hear laughter but I know it's there.

The house is empty. Parents both off working, fighting, eating, whatever it is they do in their waking hours. I hate being alone in my museum. Imagine being alone in a darkened, cold place filled with bone structures and wax figures and priceless artifacts I don't dare to breath on. Maybe it's not the menagerie I see, but it's just as dead.

I curl up in my bed, pressing my face into my pillow until I block out all of the light. It becomes hot and hard to breath. I try to hold my breath as long as possible. After long enough I resurface, face black and blue, heart pounding. I can never keep my lungs motionless for very long.

There is a certain place in my bed that I hide in. I can't always find it, but sometimes, after a really bad day, I curl into the softness and draw my blanket around me until all that's left is a breathing hole. I wait for my body to heat up the space, and then I relax into my pillow. It's a place where nothing is wrong, nobody can find me, and there is no pain. I can simply exist for hours in the haven I built in my bed.

Too soon, a storm comes and disrupts my haven. The Storm comes upstairs, finds me wrapped in the blankets, is full of disapproval. The Storm insists that it's a beautiful day outside, that I haven't been practicing my cheerleading routines lately and if I want to make the team this year I need to step it up and stop falling victim to sloth.

_Sloth_. What an ugly word. It slides off of your tongue like a thick, slimy worm, fat and wiggling and repulsive. It makes me feel dirty, and in that moment I hate The Storm, her angry waves murdering my peace.

They don't know that there is no way I'm trying out for cheer this year. They don't know that there was a five-letter word written on my locker today. Maybe I should tell them, but something holds me back.

At dinner, my parents are all questions. They want to know everything about my day. I respond with the things I think they want to hear, without having to say too much. It's like a game, I turn it into one inside my head. Answer Your Parent's Questions To Make Them Stop Asking!

Parents: "How was your first day? Do you like your schedule? Are your classes hard? How are the teachers? Do you need an override or anything for us to sign? How about your friends? Hows Santana? Hows Brittany? Hows Ms. Sylvester? When are tryouts? Are you excited to me a sophomore? Are the freshmen okay? Do the upperclassmen give you any trouble?"

My Answers: "Good. Yes. No. They're nice. No, I don't need an override. My friends are great. Good. Good. Good. Soon. Yes. I guess. No."

After the barrage, they lose interest. It's expected of them, it's in their job title as Parents, to ask these things on their kid's first day of school. They've completed that obligation for another year.

Later that night, I climb into the shower. I used to take baths, but I am forced to sit in my filth all day long, so why would I want to take a bath and continue the trend? The shower is fast, hot, burning, scalding. I run my nails across my shoulders, leaving red scratch marks. I pull my hands away, wondering when I bit all of my nails off.

My mind churns as I fall asleep. I don't want to dream, so I am given nightmares instead.

When I wake up, it's to the sound of my mother's voice. I wonder if she plans on waking me up every morning like this. I probably have an alarm clock somewhere.

I used to love going to school. Now it feels like I am dragging myself to the gallows every day. I don't want to wake up, to put on clothes, to face people that hate me. I don't understand why they hate me, but I don't plan on asking.

* * *

My parents know something is off about their precious little daughter. I haven't been acting the same for weeks now. Maybe they chalked it up to end-of-the-summer blues, but school's in and I should no longer be blue. Yet I am; a deep, almost black, blue. I know that if I'm not careful, they'll bring in Professionals. People who look at me and inspect me and pull me apart to find out what's wrong. I have to be more careful.

Tryouts for cheerleading come and go, and I'm not surprised when Sylvester finds me in the hallway. She clears the mass of students like Moses parted the Red Sea, grabs my arm, and yanks me into her office.

"What is wrong, Q?" growls my coach, her eyes looking especially dagger-like today. I stare across at her from my spot, trying to remember how I ever worshiped this dragon lady. How many years of my life did I plan on wasting to her indentured servitude?

"Nothing."

"That's a lie and we both know it. Why didn't you try out for cheer?"

I feel helpless as I look at her. It's Santana all over again. It's my parents. It's a face looking back at me that I can't cut out of my brain.

I shrug.

Bad idea.

"You have thirty seconds to tell me what's going on, Q, and while you're at it you might as well explain why your hair now resembles that of a bodybuilder lesbian."

I don't take offense to that. I haven't looked in the mirror for awhile.

"You'll lose your spot on the Cheerios," Coach says when I don't respond, and there's a hint of warning there. She is going to regret losing her best Cheerio, but there's no way she'll admit this out loud.

I break the silence. "I know."

"I'm done talking to you. Get out of my office."

* * *

I'm convinced that Mr. O' Connors knows my secret and is hellbent on making every moment in his class horrible, because he announces today that we'll be assigned partners that we'll have to work with for the rest of the year. He also announces that we'll be working with the person behind us.

Nobody is happy about this, but Mr. O' Connors has a look in his eyes like he knows what he's doing. Noises of chairs screeching as people reluctantly turn around to face their partner. I have to force my bones to follow suit.

It's not as awkward as I thought it would be.

Kurt Hummel is my age. Tall and thin, head of dark hair, in all advanced classes with me. I've known him for years, but he's always been the kind of person you grow up around yet never talk to. When I turn to face him, I'm caught off guard by his eyes. Crystal clear, Atlantic-ocean, baby-blue eyes. They watch me thoughtfully.

"Hi," I say, but it comes more like a cough.

"Hello," his voice is curt.

There is no sign of recognition. I feel something exhale in relief, a deep shudder rolling through me. He has forgotten, just like I have. Maybe I can stop worrying about what's really going on behind those blue eyes.

The first book we're studying is called _The Glass Menagerie, _by Tennessee Williams. I've never been a reader in the way some people are; I'll read a book for a class and enjoy it, but in my old life I was always too busy for things like reading for pleasure. It's dawning on me that I never did anything for pleasure.

So I'm startled when Mr. O' Connors tells us that we'll be reading the book completely outside of class.

"You are no longer freshmen,"

Well, duh.

"Now that you are sophomores, it's time to approach school differently. College is only a few years off. In college, your professors will not hold your hand and guide you through books. They will hand you a book, and tell you to read it,"

I'm listening now. College means escaping. I want to escape.

"In this building- in this world, really- teachers treat you like dumb high school kids. But I'm not going to do that. I know that you guys are smart young men and women, and you'll be treated that way. Now..." He pauses, a smile crossing his face. "Let's begin."

Our assignment is to have read the first act by tomorrow, since the story is really a play. I think I can do that. I have nothing better to do after school, anyways.

I think I'm going to like Mr. O' Connor's First Bell Class.

* * *

Coach called my parents. I find out this little nugget when I get home.

Oops.

My parents are like a serene pond. They are peaceful and quiet as long as nothing disrupts their water. But the moment a rock is plunged into their depths, all hell breaks loose. And Coach's news about their darling quitter of a daughter is a boulder.

They're furious.

Words I Catch From My Parent's Angry Rant:

-Why (I counted 21 of these)  
-Future (9)  
-Quitting (11)  
-Endangering (16)  
-Foolish (7)  
-Regret [This] (15)  
-Changed (1)  
-Silent (3)  
-Moody (8)  
-Teenager (2)  
-Expect [More of you] (7)  
-College (13)

-Grow up (5)

I don't say anything as they shout at me, then start shouting at each-other. I use this diversion as my window of escape. I crawl upstairs and lay in my bed, breathing in and out, in and out, focusing not on them but on the way my hair flutters as if in a breeze every time I blow out.

It isn't until very late that I remember I have homework. This is unlike me. I've always been the kind of good girl that comes home immediately and does her homework. I sit at my desk, scribbling, chicken scratch, crayons. I do read, though.

The book- excuse me, _play_- is very strange. It's called a "memory play", because the story is being told based on a memory. Things have therefore been modified, edited, changed, to suit the storyteller. I think that I've never read something like this before. I might grow to like it. The main character is very sad, a girl named Laura whose mother longs for her to find a suitor. Something cracks inside of me, maybe my ribs being pushed too far apart. It hurts. I close the book and hide under my covers.

"Lucy Quinn Fabray," I whisper, but the name is wrong. I'm no longer that girl. I don't think I know who I am.

* * *

I make it through several more days before I face Him. Not God. Something much worse.

I'm at my locker. There's no five-letter word awaiting me today. Someone talked to someone who talked to an Important Someone who made sure that McKinley's "no bullying ever ever ever" policy was enforced. It's all for appearances.

Then, then, then.

It's like I have a sixth sense that tells me when he's close. I've relied on that sixth sense over the past few weeks so that I never have to see him, but he's slipped under my radar just this once. I swear to never make this mistake again.

He's walking down the hall, when He sees me. He barrels towards me. Suddenly we're not in a hallway and we're not students. I'm a little animal on the road and he's an approaching truck, and I'm about to become a roadkill pancake.

But I'm faster. Like a zombie roadkill, I peel myself up from the road and force my broken, smashed legs to move. I'm running like I've seen a ghost, and maybe I have. He stops, watches, a Smile on his face. He's confused, but He plays it off. He only wanted to talk.

I escape to the bathroom, to retch, to throw up, to rip apart and yank out the disgust within my body. I reach deep within my mouth, trying desperately to yank it out. It's slimy, it's coated in nightmares. I want to flush it away like the rest of my food, but it's stuck deep within me.

It's Him. I will never be able to get it out.

* * *

**Thank you for your positive support! I'm excited to tell this story, and your words mean a lot to me!**


	3. Hear the Hellions Smile

I'm a month into school, and my grades suck. Ever since I quit cheer, my parents have been onto me. I should have worked harder to hide it from them, but the one day I wasn't home to get to the mailbox first is the day my monitoring reports arrive. God has quite the sense of humor.

All they do now is yell at me. I know they're right. I wish I could tell them when they ask why. But I can't.

They contacted all of my teachers that I'm currently failing and arranged for me to stay after school with them until my grades are squeaky clean. The only class I'm not failing right now is Mr. O' Connor's First Bell.

The other part of my punishment is that I have to start volunteering. Ever since you've quit cheer you've fallen victim to sloth. It's time you start moving again. Your father and I are serious. What has come over you? Look at us when we are talking to you.

Because I used to be vaguely interested in nursing, they've talked to some Connections who can get me started at this nursing home next week. I'll be scraping old-person food off of plates and coming home smelling of old people three days a week, all for free.

My Father's Excuse: "It will build character."

By the end of this, I'll have enough character to last me a lifetime.

On Saturday morning, I wake up realizing that it's October. Things are beginning to harden, turn colder. Subtle changes at first. Like how people slowly begin incorporating boots/scarves/jackets into their outfits. The days aren't as long. Fall sales begin popping up everywhere.

I try to remember last fall. The fall of my freshmen year. I don't remember most of it.

The museum is empty when I go downstairs. The walls are cool to the touch. I wonder when we'll turn on the heat. Probably not until December.

On Saturdays I'm usually at cheer practice. I imagine Santana, Brittany, the rest of the girls. It's nearing the time of year we have to wear long red pants under our skirts for football games. I absently wonder if we won the game last night.

I warm up water in the kettle and pick through the cupboards. I find small boxes of tea packets, all packed in neatly under crinkly wax paper. While I wait around for the kettle to begin screaming, I pick up _The Glass Menagerie _and pick up where I left off.

It's becoming harder to read this book because I look at the words and I see a mirror. Laura exists in a delicate, childish world that threatens to shatter at any moment. I now live in a world like hers, shuddering when danger's hot breath grazes my crystal skin. Her mother is disappointed in her. My mother no longer knows me.

From what I can tell, I am the only person in the class who likes the book. I think Kurt likes it, too, but I'm never really sure what my Literature Partner is thinking. He's very quiet, only talks in class when called on. I think he's the kind of person where everything goes on in his head. I'm becoming that kind of person.

He's not popular. People dislike him. I don't know why. He's not freakishly tall or fat, his teeth aren't fenced with clinking clacking braces, he's polite to just about everyone. Maybe it's the way he looks at everyone else. When we're working together in class, I'll watch him. Sometimes he looks up at me, or a classmate, and there's ice in his eyes. I don't know how else to describe it.

It makes me wonder.

* * *

The unhappy adult who proctors our lunch found my hiding spot in the bathroom, and is enforcing a rule that I'm pretty sure no one else cares about. I'm being forced to sit at lunch, and I don't know what to do.

I look around at the wave of unfriendly faces. None of them glance my direction. I was their leader, and now I'm a lowly peasant. I lower my head, trying to decide where to hide. There is a collection of lowly peasants at a crooked table by the windows. I join them.

I vaguely recognize most of them from McKinley's choir group; the boy in the wheelchair, the black diva, the gothic Asian. They're like cardboard stereotypes. But they don't scowl at me as I sit down, so I assume I am welcome. They sense I am no longer the Enemy.

Lowly Peasants (Mildly Surprised but not Shocked to See Me): "Hello."

Me (I don't remember how to be friendly. I smile but it's a grimace): "Hi."

Today I'm too sick to eat, so I just sit there. I listen. I've become an excellent listener over the past few weeks. The Lowly Peasants talk about choir songs and other things. I'm gazing out the window, watching the small cars drive back and forth and wondering where they're all going, when a voice  
startles me.

"What's she doing here?"

It's Rachel Berry. I swallow hard. I've never liked Rachel, but now it hurts to say her name. To think it. Her house. It was her house. The party. It's like coming face to face with a ticking bomb that's going to explode in my face and destroy me.

"Sit down, girl," Black Diva snaps. "She's one of us, now."

Rachel looks distrustfully at me before sitting down with her vegetarian meal. It's not her I'm looking at, though. It's the person standing next to her, the person who's trying not to look at me with his blue eyes.

I forgot that Kurt is one of the Lowly Peasants.

"Pop a squat, Kurt, we gotta discuss Glee stuff," Wheelchair insists.

The chair next to me is empty. Kurt doesn't hesitate as he reaches out and screeches it aside so he can take a seat. I sit very still, feeling foolish. I'm intruding on a world I don't belong in. It seems like an oxymoron to say that I don't fit in with the Losers, but I don't. I've been a Popular for far too long, I cannot be trusted. I wish they understood.

I pull out _The Glass Menagerie _while the rest of them talk. Their voices are blotted out as my eyes touch the page. I'm reaching the end of act two when Kurt's voice addresses me.

"What do you think about it so far, Quinn?"

Hearing my name feels like cold water has been dumped over me. My name from _his _mouth. I didn't expect him to talk to me ever again.

"Um," I say, stuttering because my brain hasn't had time to catch up with my mouth. "Um, I like it.

I identify with Laura."

The others are still talking, but Kurt has turned his full attention on me. His inquisitive blue eyes stare. "Why?"

I don't know what he's doing. We're strangers, I want to scream. Don't look at me like you know who I am, as if you know more than the rest of them. I don't need your pity, your blue eyes staring straight through me like I'm glass.

But I don't say these things. I lower my head, my hair falling over my eyes.

"She's frozen in time. She doesn't want to grow up, to worry about suitors or her education. She wants to stay young, when it's still okay for her to be a child. To play with glass figurines. And sometimes I wish that I could be frozen."

My eyes widen. It's the most I've spoken in weeks.

Kurt nods. "That's... really good. Why didn't you say that in class?"

"Those people are idiots. Half of them haven't even started reading, and the other half are reading it but they hate every minute of it. I actually like it, and there's no way I'm going to tell them my deepest thoughts only to be laughed at."

I did it again. How does Kurt do this? He brings the words right out of me. For a second it feels like we're in a world where nothing is wrong and I can still talk freely.

Kurt's looking at me thoughtfully. I would pay anything to know what's going on behind those ocean eyes. I can practically see the wheels turning in his clockwork mind. I silently ask. I ask. _What you must think of me. _

Before he responds, the lunch bell rings. The tidal wave of chairs being haphazardly pushed in and trash cans being overflowed crashes over us as we leave in zigzagging lines. I make sure to vanish immediately.

I glance back before going through the doors. Kurt's looking around, a very subtle turn of his head this way and that, and I wonder what he's looking for. Maybe he's looking for me.

He notices me. It's a strange feeling to be noticed again.

* * *

When I get to tenth bell, there's a guidance counselor slip waiting for me.

Ms. Pillsbury might be the sweetest creature under the sun. She might also be the dumbest. And I say that in the kindest way possible.

The moment I enter her glass room, there's a careful line of pamphlets on her desk. She's sitting there, all smiles and sunshine and rainbows. Her perkiness threatens to strangle me. I stare at her blankly. Pristine and spotless and cheerful greetings. I have to remind myself to be nice.

"We've noticed a drop in your academic performance recently, Quinn," she begins.

It can only get worse from here.

"What with your grades and quitting the squad out of nowhere, we are all very concerned for you."

Who is We? Certainly not my parents. They're concerned about their Reputation, not their Daughter. Certainly not my teachers. All they worry about is Grades because It Reflect On Their Teaching. And certainly not my friends, because I'm starting to realize I never had any in the first place.

"You're not talking to us. Communication is very important, Quinn. Cooperation is equally important. We want the best for you, Quinn, and we are confused as to why you're acting like this. Can you talk to me, Quinn?"

I study Ms. Pillsbury. I think she means well. I think she genuinely likes her job and the kids she Guides. But in that moment I've never hated her more because she is just like the rest of them. All they want is answers, but they aren't asking the right questions.

It's never a good thing when adults start using your name too much. It's like they're reminding you of something, by stapling your name on the butt of every other sentence. Maybe trying to guilt you, or grab your attention. "You're doing so well, Quinn!" "Keep up the good work, Quinn!" "What are you doing, Quinn?" "We believe in you, Quinn!"

I think innocent Ms. Pillsbury sees the hatred in my eyes, because her expression changes.

"Please talk to me, Quinn, if not your parents or teachers. We can't help you unless you help yourself, first."

I haven't spoken a single word yet.

Her puppy-dog, watery, Bambi eyes are looking too closely at me. I want her to look away. I fold my arms, lock my jaw, slip into my Moody Teenager costume. Maybe I can fool them into thinking this is just some sort of rebellious phase.

"Whatever is wrong, Quinn," Ms. Pillsbury says after a long moment of uninterrupted silence, "I want you to know that we are here for you."

Tears sting my angry eyes, and I'm not mad. I'm in pain. Because the truth is that nobody in the entire world is there for you. You must be there for yourself, and you can't depend on anyone else.

"Please think about what I've said," Bambi finishes, in one last vain attempt to Fix Quinn. "I mean it, I really do. And will you take these pamphlets with you? Promise me you'll read them."

I make no such promise.

The pamphlets get tossed into the garbage can on my way out.

* * *

As I crouch over the toilet, its cold rim freezing my fingers, I am forced to admit that there is something very, very wrong with me. I wipe the last bit of slime from my lips, shuddering at the taste on my tongue. My entire body is sick, moving slowly, unable to become normal. I'm afraid of something that's rested in the back of my mind for some time, but now has come raging to the surface.

I move quickly to buy the small box. It's located by hundreds of other white contraptions and bottles I can't look at. I hand over the money, fingers shaking. I drop some coins. The sound of metal hitting the floor is hollow, brittle. I think of that noise, banging in my mind like a gunshot, as I squirm over the toilet.

My body twisting in positions, shuddering and trembling, wetness on my brow. I don't want to know.

I don't.

I am scared shitless.

The little stick trembles in my slippery grip. It clatters to the tile as I turn to retch my empty stomach until I can feel my guts sliding out through my mouth because there's nothing left. I force myself to heave until I have thrown up my muscle and bones, and I slide to the ground a formless piece of skin.

I am pregnant.

* * *

**Thank you again for the amazing support! I'm having so much fun writing this and it's great to read your reactions. Happy Early Thanksgiving!**


	4. Silver-Lipped Catalyst

I've started working for the nursing home.

My cocoon has become thicker, and I am deeply ensnared. I have to struggle to break free this time. I fear that next time, it won't be so easy.

I enter the nursing home, named Brookwood after some important Mr. So-and-So. I am hit by a wall of smells. Old people have a distinctive scent. It's not a good or a bad scent, it's just distinctive. Something like old newspapers, soap, and slightly rotted food all mixed into one.

I go to the front desk, tell them who I am and why I'm here. I leave out the part that this is completely against my will.

There's a middle-aged lady who I recognize from church. She must work here. I think she's the onewho put her head together with my mom and concocted this plan to Teach Me Responsibility.

I think we've been introduced before but I don't remember her name. She senses this. Sticks her hand out. It's kinda clammy.

"Olga Young," she speaks.

Olga. What an ugly name. Olga looks like she might have once been very pretty.

"Quinn Fabray," I reply. It's automatic.

"I know."

Olga Young takes me for a spin around the nursing home. It's a very large building, and it reminds me of a quiet hotel. Plenty of rooms, plenty of old people in groups, plenty of happy pictures on the wall and a TV in every room.

Most of the people that work here are middle-aged women, but I spot a few men as well. It turns out

I'm not the first kid who's being forced to volunteer, here, because I meet a few other teenagers. None of them talk very much, but they're nice enough.

Olga Young shows me what I'll mainly be doing. I'm in charge of cleaning dishes, helping with the laundry, and serving food to the old people that don't want to join the other old people in the cafeteria. It almost amuses me. It's like an ancient high school.

Olga takes me around and introduces me to some of the people that work there. We meet some old people, too. A lot of them don't talk. Some of them won't stop talking. I don't like the way their old eyes follow me. Old people scare me. The sicker ones are twisted, silent, locked in a horrible world. I'm afraid because I fear death. Here, Death walks behind everyone like a shadow.

Olga Young sets me to work on dinner, because it's about five. She goes to find a few other volunteers that can help. I'm standing quietly in the blank white room, dicing carrots, when I hear footsteps.

"Quinn, I want you to meet Andrea, Marie, and Kurt. They've volunteered here the longest."

I nearly drop the dull knife.

Andrea and Marie fade into the background, because I'm slowly realizing that it's not any Kurt. It's a Kurt of the Hummel sort. He looks flabbergasted.

"Quinn? You volunteer here?" Kurt says.

Olga Young looks quickly between us. "You two already know each-other?"

I want to answer but my throat is too thick. Kurt talks.

"Yes, we go to school together."

Olga Young claps her hands together. The fat on her arms jiggles a little. "How lovely! I had no idea."

I stare at Kurt. He stares right back.

Of the thousands of students at McKinley; of the millions of students in Ohio, it had to be _him. _Of course. My luck with him just keeps getting better and better. But it's bad, bad, bad. Because not only do I have to see him in school. I have to see him _here. _Three times a week.

"Well, Kurt, since you already know Quinn, would you mind helping her out for the first few days? Show her how we operate."

"I don't mind," he says softly.

Olga Young talks to them for a moment about this person and that food and don't give this person that, before disappearing. When she's gone Andrea and Marie look at me uncertainly. I'm a stranger again. I'm not entirely welcome.

"Hi," says one of them. She's chunky, with wild brown hair that resembles a jungle. I'm not sure which is "I'm Andrea."

"And I'm Marie," says the other one. She's short, and her almond-shaped eyes are too far apart. I think she looks like a fish.

"Pleasure to meet you," I say. But it's not really a pleasure, because I don't want to be here.

Fish and Jungle set off to work, slicing bread and carefully pouring drinks. Kurt beckons me to the corner, where he shows me the list of people I'll be in charge of feeding.

"Since there's so many volunteers, we're each in charge of only a few people. You'll mainly be working in the west wing with me-"

"The west wing is the sicker ones, right?"

Kurt nods. "Yes. Are you okay with that?"

I hesitate. I'm not okay with that, but I say differently. "Yes."

"You can shadow us today and see how it works, and on Wednesday you'll get to meet your people. Okay?"

I tell him okay. While Fish and Jungle giggle and talk (they're clearly established friends), Kurt and I work quietly. He's gotten over the surprise of seeing me in this environment. I haven't.

"How long have you volunteered here?"

"For about a year."

I'm surprised. He doesn't strike me as the type to work with old people. It takes me a moment to realize I've said this out loud. He turns those blue eyes on me, there's a shrewd gleam to them now. Like polished marbles. "Neither do you."

"My parents wanted me to learn about responsibility. So here I am."

Kurt counts to himself as he drops grapes into a plastic bowl. "My dad wanted me to get out of the house, so I came here. Don't worry, it grows on you."

"What about your mom?" Again, I don't know how he does it. I'm conversing, like actually talking, to another person. I don't talk to people like this anymore. Why does Kurt have this affect on me? I'm pondering this when I see something on Kurt's face.

"My mom didn't have a say in it, because she's dead."

He doesn't say this cruelly or bitterly. In any other person's voice the words would have come across as harsh. But Kurt says it simply, matter of factly. He's just stating the truth. But it twists my gut to think that all these years, he's never had a mom and I had no idea. It's also surprising- and a little refreshing- to hear someone say "dead" instead of "passed away".

"I'm sorry," I mumble, kicking myself. Stupid stupid stupid. "I- I didn't know."

Kurt looks at me, smiles a little, but his eyes are sad. "I don't tell a lot of people."

_So why did you tell me?_

* * *

For the rest of the evening, Kurt and I don't get a chance to talk. We visit several rooms, I am introduced to all kinds of elders. Most of them are polite, others are mute, and there's one or two that seem cranky. But almost all of them adore Kurt.

I watch, puzzled and a little self-conscious, as Kurt hugs one of the old women and she gives him awrinkly kiss on the cheek. It's like I'm intruding on something, but it's also because I'm starting to realize what a good person he is. It's a reminder of what a horrible person I am.

The clocks gravitated towards eight o' clock, which is when the volunteers get to leave. I'm sent off to get the laundry from the washers, which are located on the bottom floor. It's creepy down here, and it smells bad. I think I see something scuttle away in the corner, when something catches my eye.

Curiously I approach the door. It's unlocked, which strikes me as odd because an old person could find this door and make a run for it. But it's also rusted, as if no one has opened it in years. It's hard to prop open, and it makes a guttural screech as I wrench it aside.

What I find is a garden.

That is, it used to be a garden. The door leads out into a sort of courtyard. It's very small, and there's a stone path. There are signs of plants and flowers, but it's long been overgrown. Weeds and moss now strangle what might have once been beautiful, as if this place has been forgotten and not tended to for a very long time.

A stone fountain sits silently in the middle of the garden, dry and with moss and cobwebs growing in it. It's eerily quiet, reminding me of a graveyard. But it's fenced off by a crooked, molded strip of wood that's long lost its white coat. It's like a secret world no one else knows about.

Quietly I leave the dead courtyard, shutting the door firmly behind me. _I'll come back, _I whisper to the abandoned garden. It is the perfect world for me.

* * *

That night, I am before the mirror. I don't look at my face, but my stomach. I pull up my shirt, I touch the skin there. It is flat. I am being childish, but I fear that already there is a sign. During the day I am able to rip off my real skin, and slip into the skin of who I am supposed to be. I wear this costume during the day, I go to my classes, I pay attention, I try not to notice when my books are knocked out of my hands.

But when I am alone at night, I become a monster.

I scream as I claw off the suffocating mask I must wear. I pretend to not be afraid, but I am. I have no idea what to do.

I spread out my fingers like bird wings, touching my soft belly. There is something inside of me. It's a creature with claws and fangs. I can sometimes feel it scraping at my insides.

Hysterical thoughts race through me. I can take a knife, I can cut it out. I can stop this before it gets any worse. I freeze as the thought rolls through me, disturbed. How did I get to this? Who am I?

I rip off my clothes, bury myself in the shower. The water is scalding hot, but I can't feel it. It's feels as cold as ice. I dip my head deeper into the thick water falling from the sky, the silver sky. It crashes over me, flows across my closed eyes and my lips. For a second, the water spills and it clogs my ears. For a second, I am locked in a world of water. I hear nothing, see nothing, feel nothing.

My mother finds me collapsed in the shower. The water has been running for so long, it is now colder than ice. She shuts off the faucet, touches my freezing cheek. Her panicked eyes find mine.

I have reverted to being a child. I allow her to pick me up, dry me off, as if I am six, not sixteen. She is gentle, she is warm. She helps me into my room, eases warm clothes over my head. Her hands towel dry my hair until there is not a single droplet of coldness left.

I am lying in the pillows, in the world I have created. I breath softly, in and out, in and out. She is sitting on the corner of my bed, trying to understand why her daughter has turned into a stranger.

My mother is not always a good person, but she loves me. I can feel her love for me as she caresses my damp bangs, pushing them back from my eyes like she did when I was little. The action creates a rock in my throat. I can't swallow.

"Talk to me, Quinnie. Why are you sad?"

In that moment, I come so close to telling her. The words build in my throat, tremble in my mouth, prepared to leap through the air and reach her ears. The entire story wants to be told. I can feel it. But just as I part my lips, an image falls through my mind.

_Coldness in my ear as I dial her number. It rings. It rings too long. Then it is cut off. She has ignored my call. I stare at my phone, heart ripping in half._

You weren't there for me when I needed you most, I whisper.

I turn on my side, burying my face in my pillow. My mother is hurt, confused, maybe even angry. But she loves me. Maybe she doesn't always say it, but I'll always know it. I feel the weight lift from my bed, hear my door close.

I smother myself, the tears burning my eyes as I weaken into sobs that overwhelm me. I break in half, disappearing further into the sheets. I weep for my life that has been murdered, its bloody remains blossoming red through the white.

She loves me, and I love her. We have failed each other.

* * *

They've given up on trying to talk to me, and I am relieved. I no longer have to endure awkward sentences from people I used to talk to. Teachers staring down at me with pity in their eyes. Ms. Pillsbury's pamphlets and Coach's screams. Even my parents are realizing that they're wasting their time by trying to communicate.

From their point of view, I'm just stuck in a rut. Once upon a time in a fairytale land, I was a princess who was doted upon and didn't care about the peasants. But my crown has been stolen from me, and I am now a mere, lowly peasant. It makes me see things differently. It makes me realize that I wasn't a person at all.

But life without Princess Quinn goes on. People laugh at me and whisper when they think I'm not listening. They say things and think things. I feel their eyes always following me. Anger, curiosity, amusement. I want to turn around and catch them staring, but when I turn around they resume talking or walking or shutting lockers.

I'm pregnant, I think over and over again. I wish they could hear my thoughts. I want someone to help, but then I don't. They would only further destroy me.

I can't trust anyone.

Alone, with cropped hair and a creature inside of me, I try to find a way out of the darkness. I go online, I tap in some words. Fourteen weeks, I discover. I have fourteen weeks until the first trimester is over. If I'm going to do something, it has to be in fourteen weeks.

I silently count. I count on my fingers like a child.

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

It's been seven weeks. The sand in my hourglass is already half gone. I pick it up, I smash it into the ground and slowly press into the glass until it turns to dust. I feel myself drowning in the sand, which has become a desert.

"I'm not a killer," I whisper to the grains.

_Not yet_, they whisper in the wind. _Not yet. _


	5. Wish Upon a Sapphire Boy

We have finished the second act in _The Glass Menagerie. _Mr. O' Connors has assigned a project to my class. "Imagine that you are a therapist," my teacher says. I smile slightly as he sticks a pen behind his ear- he's got a pencil tucked behind the other one.

"Imagine you're a therapist, and the characters are your patients. I want you and your partner to pick one character, and present to the class your therapeutic opinions on them. Think about their minds, how they think, how they act, what shaped them to be who they are."

Mr. O' Connors loves words. He tells us this, he says he fell in love with words as a boy when he first read _The Wizard of Oz. _Sometimes he gets carried away with words, lets them overcome him. I can see it now, the slight clouding in his eye as he speaks words. I wonder what that kind of love feels like.

No one in the class seems to understand the assignment, except for maybe me and maybe Kurt. They frustrate O' Connors because they overthink everything. They look far too deeply into each word on the piece of paper he hands out. I sympathize with him. We're surrounded by morons.

The problem is that this assignment is out-of-class, and it's also due tomorrow. I dislike Advanced Placement sometimes.

"Are you free after school?" Kurt asks me. "We can work in the library."

I chew my lip. I wish I could say I was cheerleading or something, but then again I'm almost relieved to be rid of that life. Of that skin. I tell him I am free, and we agree to meet at two thirty in the school library.

The rest of the day is slow.

My teachers are all so old and withered. They are grayed from too many years of clapping chalkboard erasers. It's odd to think they were once teenagers. I wonder if all kids are doomed to end up like this; gray and withered and unhappy. It doesn't seem right.

The exception might be my Spanish teacher, Mr. Schuester. He is very young, very energetic about Spanish, and very, very happy. I despise him for being so happy.

He had the nerve to talk to me after class one day, one day when tests were returned and a fat red "F" smiled up at me from my test. When he forced me to stay after and talk to him, I was silent. I shrugged. I don't care about Spanish. I don't care about very much, really.

He hasn't forgotten those words. I can see it in his eyes whenever I go into his class now. But it doesn't bother me. Nothing bothers me anymore. All of the things I called Problems in my old life are laughably small now.

Lunch is better. The others are warming up to me, I think. Kurt might have said something to them, because they've started including me in their conversations. I never have much to say, though. I prefer to listen.

The rest of my day turns into one long blur. Geometry, American History, Biology... they all become on big Ree, until all I can see are the faces of my teachers and my classmates ballooning into something and then it pops.

The last bell of the day ends. I go straight to the library, because I have all of my materials already. I try not to go to my locker as much anymore. Unfriendly advances always await me there.

I get there early. My phone says 2:16.

Bored. I look around, wonder what to do.

I move to get a book. I'm opening it, the spine crackling in my hands. My eyes are falling on the pages when something hot breathes on the back of my neck.

I am frozen.

"Hey."

It is Him.

"You've been avoiding me, babe."

Babe. Something coils inside of me, like a slippery black snake I'm swallowing.

I don't turn around. But I feel him. I feel him everywhere. It's happening all over again. I shudder as he leans over me, trying to read what I'm reading.

"Don't ignore me," he whispers. I don't expect him to be that close. His breath is hot as fire on my cheek. I flinch. His lips speak so close, I can feel something small and wet touch me.

Not Him. Anyone but Him.

I want to scream, but he's stolen my voice. It's locked away somewhere. I turn hysterical, pushing over boxes and papers flying everywhere as desks and chairs are overturned. I can't find it. I panic.

I move faster. It's not here. What has he done with it? _Not here not here not here_

"Quinn?"

I hear his voice right when I need him most.

Kurt is at the desks, has seen my bag, is looking around for me. He twines between the book shelves until he comes across me and Him. His blue eyes flick between us uneasily.

"Hey, Kurt," says He. I am frozen as he spreads his hand, slaps Kurt's in some sort of handshake.

"Hey," Kurt responds vaguely, but I can feel him watching me. I stare at the floor until Kurt's shoes turn to puddles.

"See ya around, babe." He speaks, this time to me. I do not say anything until He disappears from my world. Even when he is gone, I can still feel him. There are bugs and snakes crawling across my skin. I can hardly see.

"Quinn?" Kurt's voice is quiet, tentative.

I do not respond. I'm trying to pull myself together, looking desperately around for my body parts strewn randomly across the library, try to stitch the pieces back. I'm not working fast enough because Kurt is looking at me and I think he Remembers. Maybe he never Forgot.

"Is everything okay?"

I don't answer. I'm not really here, in the library. I'm far away, breaking in half from the pain. I fly through the air, slip into the library window, return to my body. The moment I'm back, I run.

Kurt calls after me, but I don't stop. I push through the heavy library doors and I'm gone.

* * *

That night at dinner, my parents are discussing Important Things. My mother is talking about what our neighbors were discussing today at the mailbox. My father is talking about how rudepeople are at work. I am not talking about anything.

After some time, my parents seem to realize that I am still there. They turn to me, I can seetheir eyes refocusing. Ah yes. Our daughter. The cropped-haired, depressed-version of our holy,perfect, darling Daughter.

"How was your day at school, Quinn?"

My mother asks this.

I think about my day. I think about Mr. O' Connors and the library and Him. Then my brain stopsthinking. I really can't help it when my brain malfunctions like that. For awhile there's dead buzz in my head, like when the channel on your TV goes blank and there's some blocks of colors on the bottom of the screen.

"Damn it, Quinn!"

I flinch out of my blank TV screen when my father slams his fist onto the table. The tableware quivers, like all of the forks and cups and bowls are scared of him.

"You don't eat. You don't respond. You don't go to cheer practice or sing in Church like you used to. You don't _talk_. Quinn it's about time you give up this childish act because I've had it up to about _here _with it!"

"Russel-" My mother begins.

"No, Judy, it's about time you stop coddling her. She's turned into someone else and you don't even bat an eye!"

My mother bristles. I can see the blonde hairs on her head spike up. Then she touches her head and the quills smooth back down. She's keeping her calm. Just get angry, I think. Just shout back, break things, hit the table like Dad. Don't pretend you're in control.

"She is just going through some- some kind of phase. A teenage phase. We were kids once, dear, we know how hard it is."

I want to slap her. You have _no _idea, I scream at her.

In reality I keep silent.

My father's chair screeches in pain as he stands up. "This is not a phase, and you know it. Our daughter is gone, replaced by this _stranger._"

"Russel!"

"Don't act like you haven't thought the same thing."

"You will not talk to our daughter this way!"

Our. Me. Mine. I don't belong to anybody. I'm just me, a ghostly orb floating freely this way and that. I am nobody's.

I don't want to hear them fight. I begin to get up, and my father sees. He points a finger at me, his face is ballooning and red. He's so angry. I bet I'd be angry, too, if my daughter started acting like a total freak.

"Don't you dare run off, Lucy Quinn. You are going to stay here and _say _something, god_damn _it!"

Interesting. I've never heard my father say that word before.

"Quinn." My mother turns to me. She is panicked, fluttering, chest rising quickly up and down. Her eyes are wide. My father's eyes are narrowed, slitted. He's breathing slowly, staring me down like I'm an intruder.

Maybe I am. I don't know who I am anymore. Maybe I really did sneak into the real Quinn Fabray's room and killed her, and then stuck myself into her body. I'm a stranger, an intruder, an unwanted creature. I'm the wrong person in the wrong body.

"Please, Quinn," my mother breaths. "Talk to us."

As I stare between them, I am saddened. I remember why I didn't tell them anything. I see my father, a man who loves as much as he hates. I see my mother, a woman who has blinded herself to the problems in life and therefore blinded herself to _me._

"May I be excused," I ask quietly.

My parents say nothing.

I take their silence as a yes, and go up to my room. I stay curled up in my bed for a long time, listening intently to the house. It creaks and whispers sometimes, but it's quiet. My parents aren't discussing me yet. I hear the clinking of dishes and water running. They're cleaning up dinner, but no words are painted in the air. Not yet.

Then.

Murmurs.

I crawl from my bed, crack open the door. I listen.

Mumbled words, stolen words, caught as they flew daintily through the air like pieces of scrap paper. I reach out and grab them, bring them close to my ears so I can understand. Disturbed. Worrisome. Uncharacteristic. Counselor. Phone call. Mentally. Therapist. Must do... something.

"I'm sorry I got angry," my father says softly. He's speaking an octave higher now. This means he is being honest. "I just..."

"I know." My mother's voice has turned motherly, crumbled. No longer frustrated, only weary. Weary of life. "I know."

I hear nothing.

I crawl across the floor like an animal and dig myself a grave within my sheets. I hop into the cool dirt, listening to the silence of the earth around me. Little worms poke out their curious, brown heads and look at me. Half-sawed roots try to find another direction to grow.

I lay there, listening to the orchestra of silence and burying myself with every word, every thought, everything I've ever had.

When it grows dark, I remember that I had homework. My backpack is all the way downstairs. It's too risky. I'm trapped up here. Besides, I don't want to walk through the darkened house. I am now afraid of the darkness. I used to not even notice it.

The darkness is a place where monsters can lurk. Sometimes if I keep my eyes open long enough, I can see them peeking out at me from the walls. Their growly breathing is easy to hear if I hold my breath long enough. My parent's can't protect me from these monsters.

* * *

My parents are sending me to a therapist. She's going to Help Me. Why is everyone so intent on helping me? And not just that, but the world seems intent on Helping Each Other. Helping the Earth by recycling. Helping the endangered animals by having protests. Helping the poor by donating food. Personally I think the world would operate just fine if we left each-other alone.

I've never been to a therapist before. As my mother drives me to the funny farm, she insists that it's not a therapist. "She's just a counselor," she says over and over again. "You're not mentally ill, Quinn, you just need someone to talk to." I wonder who she's trying to convince.

I think it's their worst idea yet. The last thing I want is someone to talk to.

When we get there, I get a weird feeling. It's a blank place, with blank white walls and blank faces and blank furniture. I feel alienated every time I form a facial expression.

My mother signs me in, and we sit on a couch in the lobby. Then we're called downstairs, to a hallway with a bunch of doors. We are taken to a certain door, knock on it. A moment later a woman comes out. She's in between a mom and a grandma, with grayish hair wrapped high in a bun and  
a stylish jacket around her shoulders.

"Hello, I'm Jan. You must be Mrs. Fabray." They shake hands. "And you must be Quinn."

I nod.

She smiles in an amiable way at me. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Quinn."

I shake her hand. It's not a pleasure.

Jan says my mom can wait upstairs in the lobby. There's plenty of magazines and newspapers to keep her busy during my "session". We'll be just about an hour. We'll see you soon.

Jan's office is like a library. It's filled with shelves of books and papers and statues of dogs. I sit across from her at a desk. My chair isn't comfortable. I thought these kinds of rooms were supposed to have a couch where I lay back and am asked how I feel. I twiddle my thumbs and gaze at the  
ceiling.

But instead I'm in a wooden chair.

"So, Quinn, tell me a little bit about yourself."

I stare blankly at her.

Jan clears her throat when I stay silent. She looks away, puts on glasses, and whips out a manilla folder. I can see myself squashed and folded neatly within the folder.

"Your parents tell me that you recently cut your hair and quit cheerleading, which you've done for  
years?"

I decide to look at the statue of a dog with floppy ears on her desk. I think it's a cocker spaniel. It's looking right back at me. I wonder how long it's been standing on her desk, how many conversations it's listened to. Life must be pretty dull for that dog, just listening to people's problems all day long. Jan gets to walk out and have a break, but the dog's made out of stone so he can't leave. He probably wishes he'd been placed inside a vet office or something dog-related.

"Your parents also told me you've stopped communicating with them, as well as your friends and your coach. It's dangerous to stop communicating, Quinn. Bottling everything up inside only hurts you, and your family hates to see you get hurt."

I say something.

"You're a stranger. Why do you care about my problems."

Jan keeps her expression neutral. She probably gets all kinds of crazies, she can deal with a moody teenager as well.

"I care because you're a person in pain, and it's my duty to help. I wish you'd let me help you."

Help. Help. Help.

"I don't want your help," I say.

Finally. I see emotion on her face. I try to read it. Adults are hard to read sometimes. I think she's surprised.

"I don't understand your anger, Quinn. You'd feel better if you talked about it."

She pauses. When she decides I'm not going to reply, she goes on. Her mouth flaps like a balloon, flipping up and down and back and forth. It's funny how much people talk and yet never say anything.

"You're crying out for help and your parents have noticed. You're lucky to have parents that understand. There is something very wrong in your core, Quinn, maybe a deep something you can't talk about. I don't know what's happened to you, but I'm going to help."

I stand up quickly. The statue dog is in my hand, and I've thrown it. It flies through the air for a second before smashing into a bookshelf. Several books shudder and fall to the ground, the shelf threatens to fall over. The dog lies in a dead, mangled heap of broken glass.

Jan is frozen, staring up at me in disbelief.

"Leave me _alone,_" I tell her.

My mother and I leave the funny farm quickly after that. I go straight to the car, sit there waiting while my mother is inside. Probably hysterically apologizing for her freak of a daughter and stuffing money in their faces to pay for the damage.

I expect her to be angry when she gets in the car, but she's silent the entire ride home.

We haven't gone back since.


	6. Of Daredevils and Dareangels

When I go back to the nursing home on Monday, I bring some friends along.

I get there very early, long before Kurt or Fish or Jungle are there. Instead of going to the kitchen, I slip away into into the basement. The army of washers and dryers stare at me as I go past. I find the hidden door.

Wrench it aside. Met with the cold breath of fall. Step outside into the small courtyard. The bag wrapped around my shoulder drops to my feet. I survey the mess.

I know nothing about gardening. Luckily there's this book my mom has that's all about garden husbandry. I don't know why it's called that. I'm not a husband. I'm not married to this garden.

But I am doing husbandry as I prepare it for winter.

It's called putting it to bed. The garden, that is. I found some tools this morning in our shed where the gardener keeps his things. I carefully draw out a small shovel, play with it. Old pieces of dirt crumble away.

Time to start.

My mom's book of garden husbandry told me that I have to cut down the plants that are now growing. When it's cut down, its roots are safe during the winter and it grows back next spring. If it's dead, I have to dig it out completely so it doesn't strangle what's still alive.

The weeds are everywhere. I have to get all of them, though. Not just the planty, fleshy part, but the bones as well. I pick a corner and start digging. Cutting. Pulling. I've watched the gardeners working during the spring and summer on our gardens. They always look so dirty and tired. I never thought I'd be here, on my hands and knees, working like a gardener. Here I am.

At first it hurts. I work for what feels like hours and when I step back, only a small part of the garden is clean. My fingers are painted with dirt. There's some small cuts across my fingers. Filth caked under the nails.

It's cool out, but I soon get hot. I rip off my jacket, it gets tossed to the side. I continue carefully ripping and cutting. Sweat pools around my skull like a watery crown. I look at my watch. Kurt and the others will be here soon. I have to quit for today.

Reluctantly I release the weeds. I've created a small pile of them. The mulch is churned and dark, cool in my fingers. It almost looks handsome.

I stuff the weeds into a trash bag. My tools get collected, now filled with fresh earth. I put them back in my backpack and tuck the trash bag of dead plants next to them. My back rattles as it's thrust across my shoulders.

Before I leave, I stop and admire my work. A small patch, a thumbprint, has been left. I have started something I can't stop. I will keep coming back until the garden is clean. Until it thrives. I don't know why, but it has become important to me. It's my own special, secret mission.

I know I'm crazy, but it feels wrong to leave the garden without telling it goodbye. So I whisper to it through my cracked lips. I promise to come back on Wednesday, early and with a backpack of tools.

Before I leave the basement, I hide my tools in a small, abandoned room filled with cobwebs and a broken lawn chair. This place has become mine, I think. I smile a little.

I clean myself up before I go upstairs. I stuff my dirty clothes into the backpack and put on fresh ones. I scrub at my hands until they're red and raw and squeaky clean. My hair is short now. It's easier to keep clean. I run my red hands through it, scratching out the streaks of sweat.

If someone looked at me, they'd never guess I'd been working in a garden all afternoon.

* * *

Jungle and Fish are there before Kurt is. I'm sort of relieved. The last time I saw Kurt was in the library. I don't want him there yet so I can think a little longer. In case he asks. Just in case. I need to have answers prepared.

They greet me, but not in a friendly way. I don't think they like me too much. They're not the only ones who look at me out of the corner of their eye, like I'm off somehow. Other people do, too. I give off a feeling now, it makes them uncomfortable. They aren't drawn to me like they used to be.

When I get into the kitchen room, there's a bunch of volunteers. Most of them are older, somewhere between college person and parent person. I recognize a few of them that Olga Young introduced me to.

Fish gives me the name of the first person I'll be serving dinner to today. I look at the slip of paper. It doesn't have a name on it. Instead there's just a number. I assume it's a room number.

"What's the person's name?" I mumble.

"Sarah," says the Fish.

Jungle looks at her quickly, and whispers. Fish whispers back. When they pull away they look at me briefly before leaving the room with their trays. I'm a little lost but it doesn't really matter. I turn my attention to the meal I have to prepare for Sarah.

The food here is all very plain, simple. It's not even a meal, it's from cans and packages and boxes. Shipped and processed and faked. It's like being in jail, a little. Being served fake blobs of food you don't want at a certain hour every single day.

I uncan and unbox some food and put it all on a tray. I arrange it carefully. Kurt still isn't here. I wonder where he is.

I pour some fake milk into a plastic cup with a straw and head out for war. I've been warned that most of the people here are mute and won't talk to me when I serve them food. I'm perfectly fine with that. I don't have much to say, either.

Room three eleven.

I hunt around for awhile, passing a few people sitting quietly in chairs, staring off at nothing. For being such a big nursing home, Brookwood is empty. It's a ghostly place. The souls here are quiet, locked deep inside their minds. Fearing oblivion. I wonder if I'll end up in a place like this.

I find Room Three Eleven. I enter quietly after knocking three, precise times.

There's a bed, all made up, in the corner. A table pushed against the wall. A few chairs, maybe posed for possible visitors. Sitting still and quiet as a statue is an elderly woman. She's gazing out the window at a bird feeder. It's too cold for birds, though. They've all gone south.

"Sarah?"

The elderly woman is motionless. I don't want to have to say something again. Then she stirs, turning her eyes. I'm startled by the clarity. Most of the eyes here are so clouded.

"Who is Sarah? My name is Doris."

I stand with Not-Sarah's tray. I feel foolish, and want to leave. Of course Fish gave me the wrong room. Make me look like an idiot. I'm used to people being mean, but I am aware of the pain. Like a dull thudding knife continually against my skin. Eventually you stop feeling pain, and the pain simply  
becomes your reality.

"I'm- I'm sorry, I must have been given the wrong-"

"Who are you, anyways? I don't recognize you."

My grip tightens on the tray.

"If you aren't going to talk, then don't just stand there. Get out of my room."

I extend the tray towards her. "There must be a mistake. This is your meal, isn't it?"

I'm shocked when the old woman reaches forward and suddenly the tray is gone. It's flying through the air like a bird, until it hits the wall and clatters to the ground. There's food splattered like blood. It looks like a crime scene.

Doris stares at me with fire in her eyes for a second, before it fades into smoke and she turns to the window. "Get out," she murmurs. "Leave me alone."

I stare at the old woman. Those are the exact words I told Jan.

Part of me is terrified of this person, because never before has someone struck at me like that. But the other part is already on the floor, cleaning up the mess. I'm an intruder her, unwanted, but I stay anyways. Until the floor is clean

Doris has gone back to gazing out the window, at the empty bird feeders. She's forgotten I'm there. I tremble as I pick up the tray and leave the room as quickly as possible.

I say nothing for the rest of the evening. Fish and Jungle keep glancing over at me, as if they expect me to scream at them. But I don't have the desire to. I don't have any air in my lungs at all.

Kurt is there when I get back. I help him deliver trays for awhile, then we have to help clean up. Vacuum the lobby, make sure the kitchen is spotless to ward off hungry little critters, shut off all the lights before we leave.

Kurt and I walk out together. I no longer have the library on my mind; I've forced it out. Instead the question on my lips is about Doris.

"Do you know who Doris is?" I ask as we huddle into our jackets and head out into the cool fall night.

Kurt chuckles darkly. "Yes, everybody does. She's considered to be dangerous, since one time she stabbed a olunteer who brought her the wrong meal." His voice is lighthearted. "Why?"

I wonder if it's worth bringing the guilty into this. I decide to just toss them to the sharks. "I think the girls we work with switched my list. They sent me to Doris, but said her name was Sarah."

Kurt slows down, which is a relief to me. It's hard to match his long strides. I find his face is twisted slightly. "They did _what_?"

"I just wanted to know a little more about her because she- she knocked the tray out of my hands. I'm fine, really," I add hastily. I don't want him to get hung up on the fact that Fish and Jungle sent me to a crazy person. I want to understand her.

"Did you tell Olga?"

"...No."

"Why not?"

"It didn't matter to me."

"You could have gotten hurt, though."

I just shrug.

Kurt seems frustrated. Not with me, I think. But Fish and Jungle had better watch out for him on Wednesday.

"Do you think Olga would let me take food to Doris from now on?"

Kurt laughs. It's part amusement, part disbelief. "You can't be serious."

I say nothing.

"I doubt it. But you never know."

We're almost to our cars now. Kurt gets his keys out of his pocket. They jingle back and forth, like metallic creatures.

"Why were you late?"

Kurt looks at me weird. There's something in his blue eyes. I think he's trying to make something up. But I watch the lie perish on his tongue. "I didn't want to come today."

I don't ask why, but after a moment of silence he tells me.

"I see people dying, and I have to lie and pretend to be happy to see them. Because I'm not. I know it makes me a selfish bastard, but sometimes I just get tired of pretending everything's okay."

I'm quiet. I think the same thing all the time, about the rest of my life. Not just this part, here at Brookwood. And then I wonder if maybe Kurt's talking about the rest of his life, too.

"Thanks for being honest," I say.

Kurt looks across. His gaze is steady. He fishes into his pocket, takes out a marker. I am staring at him. What are you doing, I'm thinking.

"If you ever need to talk to someone," he's saying, his voice with a sudden hush to it, like these words are ours and no one else can hear them, "here's my number."

He holds out his hand. It takes me a moment to realize. I don't want this. I cringe away at first from his touch. But then I'm looking into those eyes and I can see myself reflected there. He is okay, I think. He was there for me that night. Maybe I can trust him.

I let him write his number on my hand. He leaves without saying bye.

When I get home I start scrubbing off his number. Then I stop. I look at the faded numbers tattooed into my skin.

I save his number into my phone.

* * *

It's Halloween.

A year ago I was at a party. I remember one of the cheerleaders hosted it. I forget her name now, but it wasn't a fun party anyways. I think about who I went with and then I stop.

My mother thinks I'm going to a party this year, too. She wants me to. A part of her still believes that I am popular and beloved and invited to parties. I don't even try to humor her. I flatly tell her that I'm staying home for Halloween.

My parents have a Halloween party to go to. This is how low I have sunken. My own parents are going to a party on Halloween and I am not. I don't dwell on this. It doesn't really matter to me anymore.

When it grows dark and trick-or-treating officially begins, I hear my parents talking. It's funny how they think they're keeping their voices down when the truth is that I hear everything. These museum walls are thin as paper.

Eventually my father storms out. He's not happy with my mother. He's not happy about anything, really. Not anymore. I stay in my room, peer out the window. I can see him walking away. He steers back and forth, like an angry bull.

My mother comes upstairs. She finds me hiding in my world of blankets.

"We're going out tonight, Quinn," she says softly. "Are you going to be okay by yourself?"

I stare at the wall, where my monsters stare back. They pull their lips into a snarly grin. I will not be alone tonight.

"Yes," my muffled voice says.

"Okay." She hesitates. "We'll be home before midnight. I love you."

"Love you too."

It feels mechanical. Those words, I mean. The way they're said. She says them, her jaw moves, the words are spit out. I open my mouth and move my lips and there comes the response. I love her but maybe I've forgotten how to love. I don't think there is such thing as love.

When they're gone I creep downstairs and barricade myself before the television. I nibble at my lips, feel my stomach grumble. I find my phone. Call for food. Pizza, pizza, pizza. I used to despise these kinds of binges. But I have been hungry for years. It is time for salty, greasy, cheesy heaven.

There's a channel that's playing Halloween movies. _The Nightmare Before Christmas _is playing when the pizza arrives. I'm wondering if it's a Halloween movie or a Christmas movie, or maybe a bizarre mixture of both. A Frankenstein of holiday movies.

I hand the pizza boy his money. His hand touches mine as I withdraw. I freeze up. I don't want to be touched. I snap away, take the food with me. He gives me a weird look before wishing me a happy Halloween. He's probably thinking what a loser I am. Alone on Halloween night, eating an entire pizza and watching a Hallowmas movie.

It's not long before my peace is interrupted. My mom warned me that there would be trick-or-treaters. I forgot to turn off the lights. Doesn't that mean no one's home, I'm not passing out candy? There's bags of candy in the kitchen, though. I decide heck with it and grab the bags.

There's lots of little kids out tonight. Little monsters. Ghosts in sheets, girls in princess dresses, boys with blood on their face. They all ring the doorbell and say trick-or-treat. Pretty soon I set up a good station. I drag my pizza and the candy to the front door. I sit there, waiting for the kids.

None of the parents look too thrilled to be there. Some of them are dressed up, too, but most of them are a ways off in walking shoes and talking to other Bored Parents. I hope I don't grow up to become one of them.

Trick-or-Treating is coming to an end. I think it's eight o' clock. It's a good thing, too, because all that's left in my pizza box are grease stains and there's almost no candy left. I munch on a chocolate bar, not thinking of the empty calories I'm inhaling, when a few older trick-or-treaters come strolling  
up to my door.

There's been lots of older kids tonight. I gave them candy as long as they said the magic words. But these kids are different. I am frozen as they approach. At first I think it's not real. Because this feels like a dream. They step out of the shadows. Several dead football players. But the only one I can see is the monster.

His face is illuminated by the light of my museum. My door is propped open, wide for him to enter. I stay seated. Spasms go down my neck and my spine. I knew he came here for me. I was stupid to think he wouldn't.

"Trick or treat," He says in a low voice, a smile on his lips. Maybe I saw that smile as handsome a long time ago. But now all I see are teeth. Rows and rows of fangs dripping saliva and blood. My blood. He's dressed as a zombie football player, but all I see is a Monster.

I am motionless. I hate the way he makes me feel, the way I seize up. Panic panic panic. Be the rabbit be dead play dead pretend you're not here. I am invisible and you cannot see me. But of course He is looking at me so hard I can feel him against me.

"What's her problem?"

"She's deaf."

"Say something, freak!"

I stare at them, mouth gaping like a fish. I can do nothing. I stand up, the chair is knocked away as He steps into my house. I fall backwards. I tremble. I crawl. This is a nightmare this isn't real I am not here I cannot see there is blackness and his face is in front of mine and his fangs are dripping  
and his claws are clawing

I open my mouth to scream. I suck in the air. The sound stops dead in my throat as he shakes his head. But I want to be stronger than this. I can hear the dead football players laughing uneasily. They don't know. They think it's an act but I have never acted a day in my life.

I scream as he advances towards me, dripping jowls inches from my skin he will tear into and suck out all of the blood and gnaw on the bones. He doesn't stop. No one stops him. They entire world is laughing as his claws dig deep into my skin, pinning me to the floor. I twist and claw like a wild animal. I scream, I scream until my throat is raw and it begins to bleed. I have been silent for so long and I am suffocated and now I scream to let out everything before I explode and

And he is there and he is everywhere and they are all laughing like hyenas and I can't stop it

And I'm crying I'm bleeding

Then He, the Monster, He lifts his shaggy head and there's blood on his face it's my blood and I

can see my skin hanging from his teeth where bits of it are caught and his eyes are gleaming madly

and

And somehow I'm still alive but I'm in so much pain

And then, oh no, oh my god, no

He looks at my stomach, he places a clawed hand there. He knows. He knows he knows there is  
something wrong there is something there there is something _alive _

"No," says his horribly scratchy voice and his fangs twist upward into a smile

And then he throws back his head and lunges forward and is ripping my stomach apart and I can hear a baby screaming

I am screaming when my eyes open. My mother and father are there. The lights are flipped on and  
my mother comes to my bed. My father stands there, disheveled and his hair messy from sleeping.

She wraps me in her wings.

I don't stop screaming. I finally fall exhausted into my pillows, my throat burning. It's only then that I realize my mother has been whispering to me the entire time. I drowned her out until now.

"Quinn, Quinn, it's okay, it's okay. You must be having a bad dream."

Bad dream.

It wasn't real.

Nightmare.

My father comes and joins us. I clutch onto both of them, sobbing. I don't remember falling asleep,

I don't remember my parents coming home and helping me into bed. I don't remember anything but Him coming to my house and murdering me and it wasn't even real.

I don't stop crying for a long time. My parent's clothes are stained and wet from me. But I don't think they care. Even my father stays. I expect them to disappear, but they don't. Eventually it is my mother who leaves. I am asleep by then, I have cried myself to sleep. But my father stays. He is frowning, he is scared, but he stays. He sits on the edge of my bed and quietly watches me sleep.

The monsters watch him warily from their place on the walls. They do not dare return tonight. I am protected tonight.

* * *

**Thank you again for the reviews and favorites! It's been a thrill to retell this story for you guys!**


	7. A Cashmere Ocean Suffocating

It's the day after Halloween. I wake up, feeling sick to my stomach. At least that's what I tell my parents. There's something wrong, because they don't question me. Not even my father. They let me stay home without sticking a thermometer in my mouth.

I think about last night. They think I'm crazy. I've gone off the deep end. I wonder if I'll ever be able to fix this. I don't think I want to.

I go downstairs. I build a fortress on the couch, existing there for most of the day. It crawls by slowly. I flick through my phone. The television talks. I don't really pay attention. All I can think of is my nightmare. It was _real_. I'm surprised to pull up my shirt and find the skin untouched.

I fall asleep a few times. The crinkled, soft world of blankets around me is perfect to exist in. I stay quiet, breathing barely in and out in and out. I close my eyes but then I see Him and His claws.

I open my eyes. I can still see Him.

Tick tock, tick tock says the clock.

I press my face into the pillows. I try not to breath for as long as possible. I try to train my lungs to not gasp for air. I don't need air. I can exist without it just fine.

I get to thirty seconds. My throat explodes into fire. I have to breath.

My parents come home late from work. By now I'm in my room. I heard them coming, I crept back into my cave. I pushed the couch back into place, stuffed the pillows and blankets into the closet. The museum is no longer creepy. I am not alone.

My parents come upstairs and ask how I'm doing. My father is there, too, even though I can tell he is scared of me. Last night I was something else. He doesn't know me any longer. When our eyes meet we are strangers.

I'm doing better, I say, even though I'm really not. My mother brings me soup and crackers for dinner. I don't touch it. But it was nice of her to do that.

The sun sets and it grows dark. I can see it from my room. Shadows stretch across my room. I can see the demons preparing for flight. Soon the monsters will come. I have to ward off sleep. I cannot close my heavy eyes just yet. I need to do something.

I start thinking about Kurt. I know he went to Brookwood today. I wonder about him, if he missed me. If he noticed my absence. I think about my garden, about my secret stash of tools in that abandoned closet. I can't wait to see my garden.

I exist in my silence. I am thinking. Without thinking, I pull my phone. I touch it, no messages, nothing at all. I have grown used to this kind of silence. But not tonight. Tonight I need to talk to someone. There is no one in the world who wants to talk to me right now.

I pause at Kurt's contact. I don't even know him that well. But I need another voice and his is the one that comes to mind.

He answers on the second ring. "Hello?"

I am quiet. I wait for him to hang up on the silence. He doesn't.

"Kurt," I say.

"Quinn." It's strange to hear my name. But he says it beautifully. He sounds surprised that I have called, but he doesn't hang up on me. He stays. Maybe it's a pleasant kind of surprise.

"Hi."

"Why weren't you at school today?"

"I'm sick."

"You don't sound sick." His voice is light.

"But I am. I... I ate too much candy last night." I don't know why I feel the need to lie, but there it is, standing there and staring at both of us. Kurt knows it's not true but he seems to understand anyways.

"Well I hope you feel better. Did you have a fun Halloween?"

"No."

Where did that come from? Truth amidst lies.

"Why not?" I know the tone of voice when people ask but don't want to know. Kurt wants to know.

He is interested. He is concerned. Something burns at the back of my throat. Someone is _concerned _about me.

"I fell asleep while passing out candy, and I had a really bad nightmare." There is it again. The truth. It feels bitter on my tongue. Maybe bittersweet, I can't tell the difference. Either way Kurt is drawing the truth from a liar and I don't know how he does it. He is a magician. I am the snake he calls from  
the hat.

"What kind of nightmare?" His voice is softer.

I close my eyes. "The kind that makes you afraid of falling asleep."

Kurt is quiet for a second. I called him before thinking it over, but I wonder if I should feel awkward. I called him, a virtual stranger, and yet the silence is peaceful. The words are close, gentle. It feels natural. It should not be possible to feel again.

"Sometimes I have dreams that I'm flying," he murmurs into the phone. I settle down into the pillows, drawing up the warmth around me. My blankets. My solitude, my castle. His voice is so close, whispery to my ear.

"Do you ever dream of flying?" he asks me in a hushed voice.

I don't know why but I whisper, too. It feels right. We must talk softly in this carefully built glass world we have created for ourselves. It's a haven, it only exists on the phone when we are together and yet miles apart. If we speak too loudly our world will shatter.

"Yes. But I'm always afraid because when I stop flying I fall. I always wake up before I die."

"You don't have to fall," Kurt insists. "You can stay in the air. That's what I do. I am strong, like a bird, flying through the air. It's like I'm in water, but it's real. There's nothing holding me, stopping me from falling to my death. But I keep myself from falling."

It's grown darker outside my window. I feel exhaustion creeping into my bones.

"I don't want to fall asleep, Kurt." I sound like a child.

"You will eventually, though."

"But the monsters," I breath. "My monsters are here. They're always here, waiting for me to fall asleep." I can see them from under the covers. As darkness falls they rise. They peer at me from the ceiling, listen from under my bed.

"Tonight you won't have a nightmare, Quinn. I promise."

It is foolish because a promise is a papery, invisible thing. It can do nothing. But I believe him anyways. Something in his strong, soft voice is real.

"I believe you," I sigh.

Kurt pauses. He sounds slower now, like he is falling asleep too. But maybe trying not to. "You know, I've never fallen asleep on the phone before."

"Me, either."

He is quiet again. I wonder if he's fallen asleep. His voice is thick and sleepy now. Mine is too. I breath softly, deeper and deeper. I can feel myself falling. The dreamworld beckons. Colors splash and creatures take flight. I can hear him breathing, too.

"Why did you call me?" he asks after awhile of empty, crackling air.

My eyes are closed now. I am not strong enough to open them. It's as if little bags of sand are tugging them closed. I don't fight it. I choose the truth. "You are the only person I _can _call."

He didn't expect me to say that.

"I'm glad you did."

Something is shifting. I know he's not really here, but for a second it's like he is. It's like the world is light and snowy and he's under the blankets, gazing at me with those ocean blue eyes. I am lost in that ocean.

"Me, too," I breath.

He makes a sleepy noise in the back of his throat, like a chuckle. "Well, goodnight, Quinn."

I don't answer for a long time. I'm softly falling back into the world of dreams. I can see him and I watch as the shadows, the monsters, approach. But Kurt stops them. He stands in front of me and protects me.

"Goodnight," I whisper in my dream. I can hear him breathing deeply. He is already asleep.

* * *

I'm staying after for Mr. O' Connors today. My parents aren't thrilled with my mid-terms. So they ordered me to stay after more. I agreed. I just didn't tell them which teacher I'd be spending my afternoons with.

We're halfway through _The Glass Menagerie. _I think I like it so far. It's scary sometimes how much I have in common with Laura. Sometimes I wish I am a character in a book. My thoughts, my actions, are all predetermined and controlled. Like a puppet. But I'm lose, I'm thrown this way and that. I don't think I believe in fate anymore.

When I stay after for Mr. O' Connors, I quietly work. Work on papers I've missed. Projects I don't really plan on finishing. I am quiet because I don't know Mr. O' Connors all that well. Even though I really do like him.

He's not like the other teachers, I think. He's more free. He's happier. He's a lot smarter, too. He knows everything that goes down in this classroom.

I stay after for him again today. I'm late to his class, though. I find myself puking into a toilet in the girl's bathroom. I've been here too much lately. I try in vain to keep the gagging, the struggling, silent. It hurts to vomit.

I feel dizzy when I return to the surface. I stay on the floor until my mind is in place once more. My mouth is rinsed out by cold, metallic-tasting water. I hope he won't smell the vomit on my breath.

I finally encounter something I don't understand. It's for his class, actually. We've been assigned another assignment. _Connect the character of Laura to people you may know in your life._

In my soft little voice I ask him to come over. Most teachers would have stood, but Mr. O' Connors pulls up a chair and sits right next to me. His proximity hits me in the face. I crawl away a little. I don't want to offend him.

"I don't understand what you're asking," I'm saying. "Connect Laura to real-life people?"

"Yes." Mr. O' Connors nods. He looks at me thoughtfully. "What do you think of Laura?"

I think a lot of Laura, because I _am _Laura. I have become Laura.

"She's afraid of reality," I hear myself saying. I don't feel my mouth moving. It's like one of those bad Japanese animes where the mouths don't match the words. "She doesn't want to grow up or fall in love because she's afraid of failure. Failure will break her, like one of her glass animals."

Mr. O' Connors' eyes change. They shift a little bit. It's like I can see him thinking. "That's too easy," he tells me with a knowing look. "You're smarter than that, Lucy. Tell me what is really going on in Laura's head."

I am surprised. I didn't know he thought so highly of me. Am I really smart at this stuff? I don't think so. But I try anyways, for Mr. O' Connors. I think about the book, I scrounge around in my head for a better answer. Dig deeper, I tell myself. I don't know if I can do it.

"Laura's injury has handicapped her mentally, not physically. She has fooled herself into thinking that she is not good enough for the world, and she subconsciously thinks this only to protect herself from being broken. She allows herself to seem like a failure so that she doesn't have to face reality,

and she's starting to believe it herself."

Mr. O' Connors leans away from me. He is smiling. I think I said the right thing.

"Much better." He tucks his pencil behind his hear. I think it's an old habit of his. "Now take what you just told me, and connect it to people in your life. The kinds of people that seem to have given up."

He's looking at me, and I feel it again. Like he knows everything. I think he knows that there's more. There's a lot more to me than he can see. Maybe he's trying to help me. Or maybe I'm just being crazy and he's just an English teacher who is completely engrossed in this book.

"Thank you, Mr. O' Connors."

"Why don't you share those kinds of things in class, Lucy?"

I stiffen a little. Have to force my shoulders to shrug.

"I'm not going to force you to talk in class, because the other teachers have warned me not to try with you. Oh yeah, we gossip just like the students," he says when he sees my widened eyes. "We talk about our students just like you guys talk about your teachers. Listen... I know you don't want

to talk. Personally I think what's left unsaid is much more powerful than what's said. But you've got some amazing things to say."

Instead of looking away I hold Mr. O' Connors' eye. Usually I hate it when an Adult tries to pry things from you but attempt it in a sneaky way, like bombarding you with compliments. I hate it when they think they're smarter.

It is here that something bad happens. It is a sudden agony. Perhaps not agony, but a dull roaring.

A burning. My insides spasm as if they are screaming. I gasp, holding my side.

"Lucy?" Mr. O' Connors stares at me with sudden concern. "Are you okay?"

The pain is hot, but bearable. I want it to go away.

"I'm fine," I whisper, mind racing. My heart beats too quickly. I feel like a little rabbit, trapped once again.

Mr. O' Connors doesn't wait for me to explain. He goes to his desk, and starts playing really noisy music. It's this kind of upbeat, older music. Most teachers just play quiet classical music.

It's not long before someone sticks their head in the door. It's a bald head. I recognize one of my teachers. "Hey, Jim, would you mind turning it down? We've having a meeting next door."

Up until this point I almost thought of Mr. O' Connors as one of those stupid Adults. I watch as he nods, turns the music down. And then as soon as Bald Head disappears, the music returns to its noisy level.

Mr. O' Connors is not a typical Adult.

* * *

I sit next to Kurt at lunch now. Lunch isn't good. It's not bad. It's just a place I choose to exist in sometimes. The others are polite to me. I'll never be really accepted by then.

By listening I've learned names. Wheelchair is Artie. Diva is Mercedes. I already know Rachel. Sometimes she tries to talk to me. I think she feels sorry for me. I wish she wouldn't feel that way. I don't want anyone's pity, really.

Today has been going okay. It is going smooth. I am staying quiet. I am by myself, sitting in my corner. The others are arriving with their trays. I don't eat I watch them eat. I can never seem to get the food very far down my throat before it throws itself out.

Kurt pulls up a chair next to me. We haven't talked on the phone since that night I called him. It's like it was yesterday. It's still there. I know he Remembers everything. It makes me wonder what else he knows but won't say. He stays, though, so I do too.

Then things go very, very wrong.

An extra chair is pulled up. It's empty next to Rachel. It doesn't stay empty for long. My life turns into slow motion as He takes a seat next to Rachel. The others shift aside to make room for him. I'm staring at him. He doesn't stare back. He doesn't even look in my direction.

They talk. Their mouths flap. Open and close open and close like a robot. Mechanical robots. All of them. I can't watch. I can't move. I hate myself. Be strong. Be strong. How can I be strong. But how can I. Can I.

Kurt's looking at me.

They're in the middle of a conversation with Him. Rachel's smiling and looking at Him like he's amazing and she's been twitterpated and the world has been set right again. He's smiling back at her and holding her hand under the table and acts like he doesn't see me. I'm not there. I am finally invisible. But I'm not. I'm there in flesh and blood and blood and flesh. His blood and flesh.

A hand touches me. I jerk away. My chair clatters to the floor. People start staring. I have to fight not to scream. My heart is racing. It's Kurt. His hand it still out and he's looking at me with a look in his eyes I can't face.

They're all looking up at me. Except for Him. He's staring down at Rachel. He's smiling. His fangs are bared. But it's not her he's smiling at.

I leave that room as fast as possible. The cafeteria doors slam behind me. I am in the bathroom. I am in a stall, crying, my face running red and blue and I can't stop it. I hit my skull with my fists.

Get out of my head. Get out of my _head_.

Then it's as if the world is throwing all of this at me just to laugh, because suddenly I'm in pain again. It's not as bad as before, but this time it doesn't go away as fast. It's hard to listen to everything as I hold my side where the pain splinters like little thorns.

_What is happening to me?_

The bathroom door opens. For a frantic second I expect to see Kurt. But it's not him. It's Rachel.

She asks me to come out. I don't want to, I can't, because I'm hunched in front of the toilet gagging because maybe if I push far enough I can grab the pain and rip it out of me.

She asks me again. This time I respond.

I unlock the stall.

She is there. She has never liked me. She is short and big-nosed while I am tall and am perfectly buttoned. My fall from grace makes her feel a little better, even if she'll never admit it. We are enemies. But as I look at her big brown deer eyes, lips pouted and expression torn, I feel differently.

I am afraid for her.

"Are you- are you dating him?" The question comes from somewhere deep within. Somewhere I cannot reach. I touch my stomach.

Rachel is confused. She wants to help me but she doesn't understand what He has to do with anything.

"Yes," she says slowly.

I close my eyes, bury my fists into my sockets. "Rachel, I know you don't understand, but please- please don't date him. Don't go near him."

When I return to the world of the girl's bathroom, Rachel is no longer confused. She's looking at me with a cold look on her face. Her hook nose sneers down at me. She thinks she understands, the clarity is there, but she is wrong.

"Just because you lost him at that party doesn't mean he's off limits to every other girl," she is saying and her voice is mean and I want to crawl back into the stall. "You're jealous, aren't you? Well listen here, Quinn Fabray. My entire life I've been in your shadow and now it's time you see how it feels."

But I know how it feels. Oh Rachel, I _know_.

"You don't understand. He's not a good person. He's a monster. He will hurt you. He will smile and pretend it never happened and hunt you down in the hallways until you feel like a rabbit in the middle of the road and he's an enormous truck about to squash you. I'm trying to protect you, Rachel."

Rachel turns away. She is gone. The bathroom door slams shut, echoing off the sickly tile walls.

I stand there in silence, silence because I am surrounded by it I am drowning in it I _am _the silence. I bury my face into my hands and scrub at it until nothing is left. I have failed Rachel because that is what I _should _have said. I should have told her the truth.

But the words just stopped, like they always do. They are stuck in my throat and remain there like throw up that I cannot swallow. I can taste the words and I am sickened by them but they are

there and they will remain there forever.

I was silent. I said nothing. I let her go back into the arms of my attacker, while I huddle against the cold toilet, vomiting until there's nothing left.

* * *

**I hope you guys had a great Christmas! I'm extremely proud to say that I finally finished the next several chapters of this story, and I am basically done. It's been such a thrill to write this new story, I've zipped right through it. Thank you to all of my readers! **


	8. My Madcap Suiciding

**Authors Note: **This chapter deals with graphic themes that may be disturbing to some readers.

* * *

It was a night to remember. Months have passed since It happened but the memories are fresh. Crystal clear. Razor sharp. Time has not tarnished them. They remain on the surface, in front of everything else.

Rachel Berry was throwing a party. She was lame. Her world was small and petty compared to the extravagant lives of McKinley Royalty. It started out as some sort of sweet, innocent, kittens-and- puppies party. Like a nine year-old birthday party. Nobody was going to go. We were all planning on boycotting her party just to sink her a little deeper into the Mud.

But then something changed. Someone was bringing alcohol, someone was bringing an enormous stereo, someone was bringing the entire football team. Someone in the Royalty deemed it Cool to go to Rachel Berry's cutesy little girl party. Her party was subsequently crashed by every cool  
person from Lima.

I remember showing up somewhat late with Finn Hudson on my arm. Finn and I had just started dating. He was so tall, so handsome, such a doofus smile on his face whenever he looked down at me. His hand was warm in mine as we stepped under the roof of Berry.

There were bouncing lights, kids cheering, alcohol being sloshed around. No adults. All high school kids. Potheads were grouped in the corner, a game of beer pong commenced, spin-the-bottle was declared in the middle of Rachel Berry's basement.

I was sober at first. But then someone pushed a red plastic cup into my hand. I remember how cold and slippery it felt in my grasp. The liquid was fire in my throat, burning through the soft skin within me. Each gulp turned the room a wilder shade of color.

I distinctly remember when the Party ended and my World came crashing to a stop. I was led away from the music, from the drinking, from the hot sweaty smiling people. My world became very dark. I didn't understand what was happening.

My memory fails me here because I want it to fail me. I know what happened that night, but I don't know. I think I know, but it's a blur. It's dark and creeping and uncomfortable and I think afraid but I can never be certain of anything now. I have forced myself to forget, the alcohol has done the rest.

What I do remember is leaving the room, broken in half. Torn right down the middle like a piece of paper. The party was a monster to me, laughing grimacing a cruel griming face with gaping mouth a cavern of fire. People found me, said they'd been looking for me. Their eyes wide uncertain laughing tinged with alcohol and weed. The air thick unable to breath in. Swallowing falling crumbled smashed together roadkill.

Downstairs there is the football team. Noah Puckerman standing around, joking. He has a girl on his arm. There are other boys around him, half-nude girls I barely recognize smudged with makeup alcohol sweat. Finn is there, downstairs, laughing about something with Puck. He turns and sees me. His eyes widen. He asks me what is wrong.

I leave Rachel Berry's party a different person. I am drunk, crying, broken in several places.

My memory begins again outside Rachel Berry's house. It is a warm summer night. The faint thumping of music comes from her house. I am outside, alone in the dark under the stars. There are gardens around me. I puke into the Berry's Azaleas.

From the shadows comes someone, someone leaving the party. He is not smudged, drunken, sweaty. He looks clean, crisp, sober, disgusted. He doesn't see me at first. I shift. I make myself seen. I am not sure who it is until he leans down, closer to me.

"Quinn?" he says. "Quinn Fabray?"

It's Kurt Hummel. I don't know him very well. We've gone to high school together we've had classes together we've had to grade each-other's quizzes before but he is a stranger. He is lower than me. He is an Unpopular, a Freak of High School Teenaged nature. I have always been Popular. Our orbits never cross.

Until now.

"Are- uh, are you okay?" he asks. His voice is soft. The light from Rachel Berry's house catches his eyes. I realize they are beautiful. A stunning, brilliant, liquid blue. For a moment I am taken back to when I first saw the ocean, my little feet dug into the hot sand, flecks of cold salty ocean water dancing across the breeze to me.

"No," I cry. Something deep cracks inside of me. It wrenches me apart, like ancient earth being brutally ripped apart by a volcano. I have been together in one piece for so long but I am now two crags grabbed and yanked apart gaping wide open into the darkness.

He asks me what is wrong but I cannot respond because maybe I do not know. Maybe the answer is there, hidden deep inside of me, a secret locked away so far away nobody will ever find it. Not even me.

He sits down on the sidewalk next to me. I feel his warmth. I flinch away from it, because it is all too familiar. He soothes me, showing a strange kindness I did not know he possessed. He helps me find my cell, call my parents. I call my father. Voicemail. I expected this.

I call my mother.

Coldness in my ear as I dial her number. It rings. It rings too long. Then it is cut off. She has ignored my call. I stare at my phone, heart ripping in realizes I have nowhere to go. I am focused only on the ground, of staying in one piece and somehow walking in a straight line and not letting go because if I do I will fly up into the sky and be lost forever.

He helps me into his car. It's a big, spacious, black, nice car. But I do not feel safe. I don't think I will ever feel safe again.

Kurt asks me for my address as we drive. I freak out. I do remember this clearly. I began crying again, sobbed, mangled words wrenching from my gut and pushing upward into my throat like bile. But they freeze there. They are stuck. I cannot speak. I have lost all of my words.

Kurt seems to understand anyways. I am not even there, I am switching maniacally between worlds and different realities while he flies us somewhere. I don't even know you, I don't trust you, why are you helping me, why are you being kind, we are strangers remember.

The next thing I remember is a house. It's small and humble and a little unkempt but not in a gross way and I think it belongs to Kurt. The house is empty dark quiet. Empty dark quiet. The dark terrifies me and I am thinking of Rachel Berry and what happened and I beat my fists against my head as I weep because I do not want to remember as much as I _want _to remember.

Kurt quietly helps me into a soft, warm, place. Maybe I can be safe here. He tells me that this is his bed, that I can bunk here for the night and he can take me home tomorrow morning when I feel better.

For the last time he asks in a soft, gentle voice what happened to me. I only cry harder. His questions hurt every time. He catches on and stops asking them. He tells me he'll give me privacy, that he'll go sleep upstairs, but I blindly reach out and scream.

Do not leave me. Do not leave me alone in the darkness. I can see my monsters forming. They have been born. Tonight my monsters were created. They have wings, sniveling whispering shuddering wings crafted out of my shame and bleeding twinkling gleaming dripping eyes and faces and arching spines and tails that lash out with knives.

Nothing makes sense. I accept the madness.

Kurt sits on the edge of the bed. I lay down. I cannot close my eyes. If I close my eyes then the monsters win.

I cry myself to sleep eventually. I disappear into the nightmares. But Kurt stays there the entire night, I think. He doesn't move an inch. He doesn't know me, we are strangers, and he has no reason to be kind. But maybe he feels like this is right. This is his chance to be the good guy. So he stays and guards me the entire night, fending off the monsters as they hiss at him.

Deep down he knows. He knows as much as I do. But we both block out the truth because it is too ugly. Imagination itself cannot create something as hideous as the truth.

When morning arrives, I find my monsters have gone to sleep as well. They all snore softly around us, piled up on Kurt's floor. Light has not chased them away. As soon as I stir, their eyes blink open in a sleepy kind of way. They hear my waking breaths. They lift their muzzles, pulling their lips back and smile at me.

We are not going anywhere.

Kurt must have fallen asleep along with the monsters stretched out on his floor like rugs. He is curled up on the bed, skinny and tall and pale. His dark brown hair is messy. His lips are parted slightly, breathing gently in and out.

The alcohol his gone. My memories are still there. I owe Kurt my life. He has done me an incredible kindness. He took me in on the night when I needed someone most. He happened to be there when I was ripped in half and he tried picking up the pieces.

But I do not need him. I do not need to be fixed. All I want is to be left alone.

I slip out of the bed. He doesn't stir. My monsters stand up, follow me upstairs in a long, grim line. They snicker and cough and mutter as I go upstairs. My cellphone is dead. The house is silent. I pass by a room with a cracked door, where a man sleeps. Kurt's father? The monsters pause and curiously peer in after me. Yes, he must be. Where is Kurt's mother?

I do not wake either of them. I cannot bear doing so. Kurt has already done far too much. I hate him for taking me in, pitying me, watching over me. I do not need anyone in the world. I think it is time to be alone, possibly forever.

I walk home. It isn't long or short. I don't live too far away. My feet have blisters on them from my tight shoes. I arrive home. I arrive to the Museum. It is cold, hard, silent inside. Nobody is home.

Where are my parents?

I am colossal, stinking, dripping. I am a formless blob dragging my dead corpse up the stairs. The hallway is long and dark, littered with nightmares and bugs and broken dolls. I collapse into my bed, I create a world of blankets. I do not change my clothes, take a shower, wipe away the filth from the party.

I simply exist in my disgusting, rotting skin. I long to rid myself of this one and slip into a new one, like buying a new coat. A coat where I can move my head and smile and live like I used to. Back when I was a Normal, Real Girl. Now I am a ghost. I am dead.

I do not see Kurt for a month. The next time we meet, we are in Mr. O' Connor's class. We both pretend that nothing happened, that nothing has changed between us, that we are strangers like we used to be. We both pretend not to remember the night of Rachel Berry's party, when Kurt found me crying in her front garden and he let me sleep over at his house so I could recover. I do not ask what happened after he woke up and found me gone. He does not ask where I went,

how I am doing,

if I remember.

Now here I am, months later, with the colors fading and the leaves falling and the cold October sky becoming a cold November sky and the world is as bleak and empty as my heart. I remember what Kurt did for me, and I never forget that I owe him. I will always owe him.

So that is why, on this night, I must answer him.

* * *

I don't want to pick up my phone, because I am afraid. But I recognize his number flashing across the screen. He is calling me.

"Quinn." Kurt. It's Kurt's voice. He sounds like he's been crying. This alarms me. "I have to talk to someone. Can- can I talk to you?"

I am silent. _I owe you. _

"Yes," my voice responds to the watery, unhinged voice on the other line.

"I- shit, this is stupid. I shouldn't have called you. I didn't want to bother you, but- but then I thought of when I called you the other night and it was okay. I just wanted to feel okay again. You know?"

I can feel myself bristling. What is wrong with him? I have no idea how to handle it when people cry. I don't know how to comfort them. So I am silent. I let him go on.

"Tonight is the night my mother died, seven years ago."

Well. How does one respond to that?

"What happened to your mother, Kurt?" I am awkward, clutching something I don't know how to hold.

The silence on the phone hurts. I regret asking. I am prepared to pull the question back into my mouth. It flutters around us like a dainty moth.

"She died of a disease," he says. His voice is unnaturally soft now. He is speaking words that have maybe been heard by two or three people. This I am sure of. "I was young when she and my father found out. It was a slow, painful death for her. My parents went out of their way to make life seem normal. But then she died. And my father couldn't make her disappearance normal, no matter how hard he tried."

I am sorry to hear this. No one should lose their mother. I ask him what she was like.

There comes a sound like Kurt is chuckling, in a sad, rueful way. "My memories of her are few, but what I do remember is that she was perfect. She always held me when it stormed and made me these delicious pancakes that only tasted a certain way when _she _made them. I used to sing for her and she'd-  
ah, she'd call me her little songbird."

Kurt stops talking. I think he's said too much.

"I- ah, I've never told anyone that before." His voice is low.

I listen closely. His breathing is still hitched. Breaking every so often. He's not crying anymore, but his breath is still wet, his face still smudged with salty tears. I can taste them through his words, like the spray of an ocean wave.

"Kurt, why did you call me?"

He has nothing to say at first. I wait patiently for his response, tapping my toes against my bed. When he finally talks, it makes me freeze.

"Do you remember that night in the summer of Rachel Berry's party?"

No. No. No. Not that night. Of all nights, _do not remember that night. _But I do. I remember.

"I remember," I echo.

"Ever since that night, Quinn, I've wanted to understand you. You were such a mess that night, and- and in the morning, you were gone. I hear rumors about you, about that party. Then school starts and your hair is gone. You're silent. It's as if the real Quinn Fabray died that night."

I cannot believe he is really saying these things. He has left so much unsaid for so long. Mr. O' Connors said that what is left unsaid is more powerful than what is said, but he is so, so wrong. I feel my heart racing in my throat, my eyes full of sudden angry tears.

"Everyone else has forgotten about you, but I haven't. You may have always been popular and I've always been unpopular and we've always been strangers, but you're in my life now and I can't stop thinking about that night. So I- I guess, in answer to your question... I called you because I wanted you to answer."

I close my eyes. The tears are warm, overflowing, like too much water inside of a cup. It drips, pours, rains down like I cannot stop it. His words are so powerful. His voice is real. _Kurt _is real.

I have nothing to say to him, so I just bury my face in my arm. His voice returns, rough. Like the tears aren't gone. "Will you let me understand you, Quinn?"

Nobody wants to try to understand me anymore. But maybe you don't need the entire world to try to understand; maybe you just need _one person _to try.

I reach around the gooey, bloody, thick chunks of _Him _in my throat. There are all of my words, there is my voice, right where I left it. It is nearly unrecognizable and I can hardly pick it up.

But all I need is one word. Please, _please_.

_"Yes."_

* * *

I don't know if it is minutes later or hours later, but Kurt and all of his warmth is gone and the stabbing has returned. I feel the pain splinter through me before reaching my core. I am aware of something running down my legs. It feels like fire.

I am in the bathroom, I am locking the door. I feel the sobbing begin as I rip away my clothes, parts of my skin and bone being ripped away with the fabric. The fire is slick at the bottom of myself. I pull away the soft fabric, eyes widening at what I see.

Blood. Blood everywhere.

I drop my underwear, my sobs hitching. I don't know how much of it there is. My fingers are tinged scarlet. My inner thighs look like they've been splashed with red paint. I cannot bear to think about it for too long before the clock starts ticking and then it overcomes my mind and I can no longer think.

It is here that my clock is broken.

"Go away!" I scream to the bleeding monsters on the bathroom tiles. I was feeling better, I was learning how to live again, remembering. But then they always return. Maybe they were never gone.

I turn on the water. To me it sounds like screams. The screaming of something awful. I try to step into the water but it scalds my skin. The world is spinning it won't stop my body is bleeding where it shouldn't I am in pain where I can't be in pain what is wrong with me what is wrong what is _wrong_


	9. Between Oblivion and Paradise

When It finally happens, I am shocked. It doesn't help that I have went out into the world and flicked through books about this. It doesn't help that I found woman on the Internet that have gone through this. It doesn't help that I realized this was inevitable and there was nothing left but  
to wait.

When It finally happens, I feel destroyed.

It doesn't hurt like I thought it would. It's a different kind of pain. A pain I have never experienced before. The kind nobody understands until they see their arm cut off or their blood pooling around them as they realize this is a part of _you _and it is dead.

The vomiting and the aches and the bleeding. They're almost gone. It's going to be a few days but the physical pain will go away. There is no guarantee that this mental pain will ever leave.

I sit quietly by the toilet, crying. I am alone in the Museum. My parents are at work. I am skipping school. School. That place. It feels so far away. I don't even remember what my life there used to look like. I haven't look into a mirror in days. I don't think I remember the color of my smile.

It is because of these things- all of these lost things- that I cry. The tears drip like diamonds down my cheeks, rolling and falling and splintering into a thousand little pieces across my cold toes resting on the tiled floor. I am curled up beside the porcelain toilet, my sobs echoing off of the walls. Ghosts surround me, haunted smiles on their faces. My demons snicker in the corners.

My insides feel weak. You've cried for hours and hours. There's salty tracks leading down your face where your tears have carved a pathway on your cheeks. Your throat hurts from breathing in sharply. Your body feels fluttery, weak, utterly empty. Like a butterfly whose wings have been ripped off. Trying to flutter away, working in earnest to get up, but it is impossible to ever get up again.

I cry until there are no tears left. I can feel other parts of me still crying. think I have a soul any longer. Whatever was left of it after Rachel's party has been ripped in half and then in half again until it is nothing but scraps of paper. I imagine my torn-up soul as little torn shreds of paper, littered inside of me next to the scratchy, clicking bugs with long antennas and beady eyes that draw back their clawed faces and _laugh _at the shreds of paper.

I fall asleep beside the toilet. I am curled up in a fetal position. This is where I am prepared to die, right next to the piece of me that is motionless in the toilet water.

The toilet is cold against my sweaty scalp. The bathroom tiles dig into my skin like icy knives. I shiver, whimpering like a sad little animal. I feel like an animal left out in the rain. I am a little pathetic bag of bones, with nothing left but a washed canvas.

When I sleep, I dream. I dream of Him. I see His face, in front of me and I remember every small detail. I don't want to, but there they are, displayed in front of me like broken toys. He doesn't look like a monster now. He hasn't always been a monster. But on that night, he was.

My dreams whisper towards the safe I keep. It is small, could be passed by and no one would guess it is a safe. But I notice. I stand a ways off, swinging along the creaky playground, the storm approaching over my head. I meander over to the safe, unlock it only after one try. The secret is there. I trembles as I reach in, withdrawing the secret. I cradles a dead baby to my chest.

The secret has escaped the safe. I dig my heels into the dirt, look across the stormy field, the dead baby in my arms. My gaze is as angry as it is broken.

I remember now. In my dream, I gently taking the dead infant and place it in the grass beside the safe. There is a gust of wind and the body fades into nothing. The dead secret is at peace now.

I invite myself on a journey. A part of me has Remembered, but not all of me. The other part of me is still confused.

I go along the empty field. I approach a house. It is a very familiar house. There are lights and thudding music and drunken teenagers. I enter the house, where nobody seems to notice me. It is Rachel Berry's party. I see everyone, dancing just like they were on that night. This is no longer a dream, but an unlocked memory.

I take myself upstairs. I enter a dark room. I get chills from entering the dark room. This place is all too familiar for me.

I watch as the door is pulled aside. A boy enters. He is holding my hand. I am outside of my body, and I am watching myself being pulled gently into this darkened room. I was so beautiful, so happy, so unaware. I dread what comes next. It's the worst part.

At first we were happy. I kissed him, he kissed me, we went back and forth in a playful game.

I touched my heart-shaped lips to his, relishing the sweaty warmth he wrought. His hands were hardly there at first, then tested the waters. He led me to the bed, which I rolled onto. It felt like feathers against my back.

His hands started going deeper. Too deep. For the first time that night, I felt pain. His hands had gone so deep, they cut me.

"No," I said, trying to sit up. "Stop."

The boy's transformation was slow at first. There was a monster on top of me, teeth gleaming and tongue hissing, and he wasn't listening to me.

It felt like a sword being pushed deep into me. I tried to push him off but he was a smothering wall of rocks, pressing me deeper into the mattress. I stopped struggling against the sword. I laid there like a corpse. Behind his back I could see slippery, foul-smelling, repulsive creatures being born out of the sticky fabric of my nightmares.

When it was over, he slid out of me. He pulled up his pants. I still remember the metallic sound of his belt buckle as he put his belt back on. His lips played up into a wispy smile. I do not remember any of his words. I remember just laying there on the bed, staring up at the ceiling.

He went downstairs. But I was not alone. He'd left behind his monsters.

I turn to my subconscious. I remember now. My entire being Remembers. I managed to block that night out for so long, to blur the memories, but it is not easy now. Not now, when I face a death that has changed the course of my life.

I was raped that night.

A door creaks open. The ghosts scatter, my demons hide behind the sink and the toilet. They watch through craggy eyes. An Adult enters. Her Mother. They cannot be seen by her. It will destroy the spell.

Through the thick air I cannot hear. I am dreaming. In the dreamworld I am back in the field. Cobwebs surround me, silken against my lips. The trees grow roots that glisten like emeralds in the setting suns. They grow towards me, forcing me to look. A door has manifested itself next to me. It opens.

"Quinn," says the empty door. It's been pushed aside by a ghost. I struggle to see the ghost's face.

I don't recognize the voice. But I should. I have to try.

Tree roots surge forward. They touch me. I flinch away. The roots are unnaturally warm. Like a human hand. I bury my head into the ground, fighting to find an eraser to rid myself of my face.

Lumpy and broken and rusted. That's all that's left.

I lift my head in the realworld. There isn't a warm tree root touching me. There is a human hand touching me. I stare at the tentacles. They slowly connect into a thin arm. Then a shoulder. Then a body. Finally a bony face. A skeleton with lipstick and a yellow wig of hair.

"Quinn, why are you in here?" the skeleton somehow knows how to speak, despite having no voice box. Voice box. It's a funny name for a piece of muscle. When I was little I imagined it was like a pretty little jewelry box on the inside of all of our throats. Instead of jewels inside the box, there is a voice. Maybe it looks like a tiny microphone.

"Mom," says the dying girl by the toilet. I think that is the skeleton's name. She is my Mother. But she belongs to another girl. A different life. Maybe the girl in the mirror, yes, this is_ her _mother.

But I have no mother. I am alone.

"Come on, Quinn. Come on."

The skeleton reaches deep. She tries to pick me up. I feel her bony hands against my ribcage. I remember how He reached into me. I pretend her hands are his. I scream. I break away from her, forcing the lipsticked mouth to part.

"Please don't touch me," my voice box pleads.

I am crouched against the floor. I can only see her feet. Her shoes. They are shiny and red, with sharp pokey spiky heels jutting out like blades. I watch her shoe's expression. They step back a

little. Fearful. Shocked. Unhappy.

After what feels like a very long time, my mother sits down next to me in the bathroom. She takes more time. Her bones crack, her fingers press, her lips tighten. Finally she is settled. The moving is no longer. I can feel her again, her tree root hands touching the small of my back.

Mother: "I got a call from school today. They said you didn't show up for your classes."

Me:

Mother: "Why did you skip school today, Quinn?"

Me:

Mother: (Sigh) "Oh, Quinn. How did we get to this."

Me: [Thinking] We got to this because I was raped at Rachel Berry's party, and when I called you for help, you didn't answer.

I imagine us in my mind's eye. We must be a pathetic pair. I am small withered snapped in half, curled up against the white slicked wall. My head is bowed into the floor, eyes screwed up like nails poking out of them because I'll do anything not to glance up. If I glance Up I will see the monsters leering Down at me. Then my mother, a grown-up version of me. Blonde and older and sharp and frightened by the dead daughter next to her. The waterworks commence.

Mother: "I know this is hard for you to understand, but when you grow up, it's harder to see things the way you can when you're a teenager. The world isn't as bright, your days start goingby too fast. It's easy to get sucked into the loop. The loop of waking up, going to work, coming home, going to sleep. When you're in the loop, you're blind to lots of things. I've been blind to you, my love. And I- I am sorry."

Me:

I Shift. I start Moving again. I Move closer to the skeleton lady. With the lipstick mouth and the leaking eyes. She doesn't understand, not at all. But she wants to. I feel her warmth and it breaks my heart. I curl closer into her lap, lying my head where her heart beats. I can hear it. _Thuh-bump. Thuh-bump. Thuh-bump._

Her arms wrap around me.

Mother: "I don't know what's wrong, love, but I'm going to stop asking what's wrong. I want you to know how much I love you, Lucy."

Her voice is so kind. She means so well. Oh, she has no idea. Now. Now I can tell her. On the eve of the death I can tell her the truth. She can understand. We can all be one big, happy family once more. Cut out of cardboard and glued together onto a watercolor piece of paper that makes everything perfect again.

Only it will never be that easy.

Me: "I love you too, Mom."

I mean it.

* * *

The hours are ticking ticking ticking. School is almost out. The teachers are thrilled. There's excitement in their little teacher eyes. The students have turned into animals, loping the halls and climbing walls. They're all so excited about being off of school for a handful of days, they forget about tormenting me. I walk through the halls today without having my books knocked away or people whispering cold words to me as they zoom by.

In our last day of Mr. O' Connors class, we present our projects for _The Glass Menagerie. _I finally finished it a few nights ago. It ends very sadly; Laura's favorite glass animal, a unicorn, gets broken and her suitor leaves after revealing he is already engaged.

Kurt does most of the talking. At the very end, there is a part I specifically asked Kurt to give to me. I know that talking will be hard, but I think of what Mr. O' Connors said to me. He thinks I have amazing things to say. I have to try, for him.

We end up on a slide about the symbolism behind the unicorn. The class stares at me through their blank sockets, their little mechanical lenses blinking curiously up at me, as if I am a bizarre specimen they are studying. I feel the words. I taste them. I make them real.

"The unicorn symbolizes Laura. The rest of the world is very normal, like a pasture of horses, and she is very unique, like a unicorn that stands out in the crowd of horses. To make her a normal "horse" would mean to break her; just like the glass unicorn that gets broken at the end of the story."

It's the most I've spoken in class all year. They're looking at me with their robot eyes and blinking mouths, wondering who I am. They don't recognize me. But it's the end of our presentation, and at some point they clap halfheartedly. I catch Mr. O' Connor's eye, after a second he nods in approval.

I feel strangely proud. It's been so long since I've felt proud of myself, it takes me a moment to recognize the feeling.

The bell rings. Hell breaks lose as teenagers run away to their buses, their cars, their houses. Just in case the principal changes his mind, forcing us to stay over break. I wait until the hallways are empty of the herds of cattle, before adventuring out into the trenches.

* * *

Today is Thanksgiving.

The house is filled with love and warmth. Candles are lit. Food is in the oven. Holiday music drones from my father's radios. Everything has been colored a lovely shade of orange. I wake up with my face curled into my stomach, my toes cold against my skin.

After a few hours of drifting in and out of sleeping, my peace is broken. A knock comes on my bedroom door. The velvet and blood is pushed aside as my father's rough voice speaks. He's trying to keep his voice low. "Quinn, it's time to get ready. The family will be here in an hour."

I am inside my head. Mentally I frantically move around, trying to regain control. I push the red autopilot button. Ah, that does the trick. My body mechanically stands up. I can hear the steam hissing from my ears and the clockwork turning in my brain. From behind my eyes, it's like I'm watching a movie. I watch as I take a shower, dry off, put on clothes, ignore the mirror.

I zip up my Happy Skin, all the way to the crown of my skull. Today I will pretend to be a happy, healthy, normal girl. Perfect, just like the rest of the world wants me to be. I will give them what they want.

The problems start immediately. The first family members- uncles, aunts, cousins, does it matter- arrive with food smelling like love and cooked things and heat. They paint smiles on their clownish faces. They hug and kiss us with lipsticked, mustached, chapped mouths. I can see the shock in their eyes when they see me. My parents have warned them, but nothing could prepare them for the real thing.

It doesn't take long for the rest of the family to trickle in. By the afternoon it feels as if there are thousands of bodies there, pressed up against the walls, against me, hanging and dancing like puppets. The noise of laughter, wine glasses clinking, crackers being nibbled on. I shy away from the loud. I prefer to exist in the quiet.

The relatives don't give me a chance to escape. They all grab me, pinch my cheeks, tell me how much taller I've gotten since last year. I don't know half of them. I'm convinced half of these people are well-dressed hobos that claim they are related for the sake of free food.

The entire time I smell flesh burning. I circle back around to the oven several times. Pace in front of it, lowering my head with peeled eyes as I look into the window. There the turkey rests, on fire and burning and beautiful. I gaze at the dead body. This thing was once alive. It ran around and ate and talked. It had a family. It probably didn't want to die.

I've always hated Thanksgiving, even before when I was a real girl. It's filled with thick, creamy, greasy food that makes your stomach bloat until the buttons are tight, an animal carcass that sits dead in the middle of the table and you must be thankful for its death, hundreds of relatives that you don't remember with clown hands and painted faces and too-white, too-sharp teeth. I always want to retreat back into my room.

Dinner commences around three. We all create a never-ending circle around the decorated table with all of its plates and china and silverware tipped with gold and glass goblets filled with alcohol for the adults. I know that some of my cousins will try later to sneak alcohol while the adults sit around  
and talk until it's time to go.

The tradition is that we say a prayer in unison, then go around and we all say something we are thankful for. Everybody starts to link hands. I feel myself pushed into the middle of the circle, hands groping at me. Someone to my left tries to take my hand. It's my cousin, who's about my

age. I stare at him through rabbit-fearful eyes. For the first time I realize how much he resembles Him.

"Just take my hand, Quinn," he hisses impatiently at me when I rip my fingers away from him. My heart hammers as he grabs my hand again. I close my eyes. This is bad. I can't think about Him. Not today, on a day when you have to be Thankful.

We all bow our heads, courtesy of the strings attached to the napes of our necks. All but me. My strings were cut a long time ago. I stare around at them all, the family I do not know, the family that does not know me. In a roomful of people, I feel alone.

They all say what they're thankful for. Family. Warm house. Friends. Good job. Spouses. The words keep falling falling endlessly until the mouths all stop, the jaws wired shut with their peephole eyes staring daggers into me. What are you thankful for, Quinn?

Me:

The silence stretches until I can no longer see it. I squint my eyes. Look away, look away, maybe I will turn invisible. I have nothing to be thankful for. I cannot think of anything. I am angry and sad that they are making me spit out words that don't line up.

Unnamed Uncle: "What are you thankful for, Quinn?"

Me:

Unnamed Sister-In-Law: "She's not gonna talk, just move on."

My Father: "No, she will speak. Tell us what you're thankful for, Quinn."

Me:

My Mother: "Quinn, please..."

Me: [Inner Commentary] There's a turkey on the table a pile of bones and burnt flesh. There's people around me with strange masks on made up of plastic and glue and wax. There's two people I call my parents who want me to be thankful. But I'm not thankful.

My Father: "If you don't have anything to say, then you won't have anything to eat."

I've never felt so relieved in my life. Already one step ahead of him, I break away from the hands holding me back. I turn the corner and I'm gone, hurrying upstairs, locking my door behind me to keep out the ghosts.

I shudder deeper into my blankets. I am safe now. He cannot get me here.

I listen closely. Dinner commences without me. My stomach growls. I'll sneak downstairs later, pile food onto a plate and disappear when the adults return. I crawl out of bed, struck by sudden inspiration. Lightning bolts zap me across the head as I hunt through my desk.

There's something I've been meaning to do for awhile. Ever since Mr. O' Connors told me I have a way with words. I want to see if he's right.

Pencil and paper in hands. Scuttle back to my cave, my hut, my hole. The warmth is soft and dark here.

There are no sounds. I can close my eyes to concentrate here.

I'll always hate Thanksgiving. Today was the crowning jewel of Bad Holidays With The Family. But at least it's over and I got out alive. I wonder where I'll be a year from now. Next Thanksgiving. Will I be alone? Happier? Dead? I try to imagine it. All that comes in is TV fuzz.

I think for a long time. Finally I push the lead against the slightly scratchy surface of the paper.

I begin to Write.

_Once upon a time, there was a girl... _


	10. The Serpentine Rhapsody

December has arrived, and with it the first snow.

_Snow _is an exaggeration. It's more of a dusting. Little white flecks of frozen rain scattered about like spilled marbles. The trees have been turned into tall, skinny skeletons that paint black against a gray snowy sky.

I'm at a bookstore the next time I see Kurt. I see him first. I don't know what to do. He is there, standing by shelves of New York Times bestsellers. He's dressed in a winter coat, even though it's really not that cold. A red scarf is draped around his pale neck. It drips like blood down his

throat.

I turn away because I'm too shy too approach. This used to be something I was good at, but now I don't know how to deal with seeing people I know in public. Kurt must have felt someone's eyes burning into the back of his skull because I hear him say my name.

He comes up to me, a few books tucked under his arm. He looks different. I realize it's because he's wearing glasses. They're thin and black frames against his eyes, but not ugly. They make him look like an artist, or a librarian.

"Hey. Funny seeing you here," his words smile across his lips. "I didn't know you like to read."

I don't, technically. Ever since I've been spending my lunches in the library, I have discovered Books. Thousands of little words printed on blank pieces of paper that put images into my head, like a mind-movie. But that's not why I'm here. I'm writing. I tuck my book deeper into myself to shield my words from prying eyes.

"I didn't know you wear glasses."

Kurt reaches up to touch the frames. He must have forgotten they were there. "Oh, yeah. I need them to read sometimes. I, uh, don't like them that much." He studies me through his spectacles, a miniature wall of glass separating us. "Do you want to go get Starbucks?"

I stumble against the roof of my mouth. "No money."

"I'll pay. You can pay me back later, if you want."

I think had it been any other person, I would have declined and ran out of there. But it's Kurt.

Someone who is beginning to mean something to me. So I nod my head. He steers me through the shelves of paperbacks and hardcovers and people standing around looking bookish. We find

Starbucks and he orders two chocolatey somethings I never would have touched when I was a Real Girl.

Most of the seats are filled with the Laptop Army and snuggly-cuddly lovers on a Starbucks date. I find a booth next to the window, which radiates cold as I settle near it.

"So how was your Thanksgiving?" his voice asks as I take a cautious sip of the coffee. It scalds my tongue. I relish the pain.

"I refused to tell my family something I'm thankful for, so my dad sent me to my room. You?"

Kurt laughs a little at my words. I didn't mean to be funny.

"Mine wasn't that great, either. My parents are both single kids, and my grandparents are all either dead or don't live in the country, so it's always just me and my dad. It's kind of lonely."

Kurt's eyes flick to something next to me. I flinch when I realize what he's seen. I try to touch it, brush it back into the unknown, but he's seen it. Too late. "What's that?"

I don't want to lie to him. I withdraw it. "It's a story I'm writing. It's... it's not much, yet."

His blue eyes sparkle with interest. "So you're a storyteller?"

"I guess."

"What's it about?"

I'm still getting used to the way my throat changes when I'm around Kurt. With the rest of the world it is stuck and filled with nails that scrape against the flesh of my throat when I try to talk. But with Kurt, the nails and the goo and the cement are gone. I can tell him everything.

"It's about a girl," my voice begins, softly into a different tune. "She's trying to tell the world a story, but hasn't come up with the right words yet."

Kurt's looking at me with something on his face. It's as if he's peering right into the windows of my face, getting a glimpse of what my soul looks like. It's an ugly, wretched thing, but when he sees it, he's accepting.

"What is the girl trying to say?"

I've given him too much. It feels like he already knows, he's just looking for a confirmation. I shy away from those words, the light that shines like fire into my eyes. I don't want to talk about this anymore.

"Did someone hurt her?"

I freeze up. I'm like a computer screen that abruptly stops moving, frozen face with parted eyes and an "O" for a mouth. The cobwebs are back, the demons scuttle closer. I imagine the bookstore slowly closing in on itself, one brick falling at a time.

"Stop it," I whisper.

But he won't stop. Kurt's eyes are brightened by a different emotion now. "That night you came from Rachel's party and you got in my car, you were so drunk. So emotional. You kept talking  
about a room."

"Stop it!" My voice isn't a whisper. It's not a scream. But it feels like one in my throat. Kurt's startled by me but he doesn't try to stop me as I suddenly get up and leave. I move quickly through the books, it's a labyrinth that I'll never truly get out of.

When I push through the doors, a blast of cold December wind hits me. I don't want to move any farther. I move to the edge of the parking-lot, teetering between solid ground and an ocean of black cement when car-boats drive by with their horns blaring.

I see a ribbon of red out of the corner of my eye. A warm body comes to a stop behind me. He struggles to speak at first. Maybe he knows how it feels.

"You forgot this."

He's holding my book in his hands. It's been unopened. I take it away from him quickly, fingers stashing it away where it will be kept safe. We're silent for a moment, the cold wind biting into us, but neither of us willing to move.

"I'm so sorry," he tells me in a very low voice. "It's not my business to ask what your story is."

My eyes pinch open and shut a couple times. I almost expect to feel salty tears rising, blurring my vision. But there is nothing. Maybe I am tired of crying.

"I'm sorry too. It's just... it's hard to explain. I don't know how to say it." I don't recognize my own voice. It's shaky, wobbly, like a newborn colt, but then it's strong. It rises and falls through the air, reaching Kurt's ears. I hear him exhale softly.

"Then don't say anything," he suggests. When I look at him, there's a ghost of a smile on his face. I promise myself that one day, I will tell him everything. But for now, we will remain like this.

"Are we- are we friends, Kurt?" I'm not sure where the question comes from. Deep inside, where the chasm is always hungry and thinking but nowhere near breathing out my secrets. It's the vulnerable side I don't show anyone anymore.

"Even though you're one of the most mysterious people you've ever met and I have absolutely no tact sometimes... yes, I believe we are." When he smiles down at me, it touches his blue eyes. For the first time I can see myself reflected there.

* * *

Every time I go to Brookwood now, I always get there early. I quietly escape through the slow hallways, the falling stairs, and I am in the basement. A small kick at the door after sweeping up my bag leads me into the garden.

I have pulled up all of the dead plants and the creeping old weeds. There is still much work to be done; rocks to be rearranged, mulch to be laid, statues to be straightened. The beds are far from perfect. They are patchy, dark, sick. They don't know what to think of being cared for. It's been so long that a person has come to weed that they are bewildered by my actions.

It's getting harder to stay outside. The weather grows colder. It's snowed a few more times, each time heavier than the last. I'm forced to bring gloves now. The air is frozen sometimes when I wake up in the morning. But it is bearable. Pain doesn't feel all that painful anymore.

Olga Young has allowed me to go back and serve food to Doris. She doesn't think it's the safest idea, but I tell her that I can handle it. I'm stronger than I look. At least that's what I keep telling myself.

Doris doesn't seem to care much for me. I don't think she recognizes me. Her sickness fascinates me. A lifetime of memories, stored up over many decades, can be destroyed in a matter of months. The human mind, for all of its triumphs and power, is as weak and flimsy as a piece of paper. This disease enters the mind and just devours it. Sends everything into oblivion.

Olga only agreed to let me serve food to Doris if someone else was with me, just in case Doris wanted to chuck something at my head again. Fish and Jungle were out, of course, and Kurt is the only person I know that volunteers at Brookwood. So he comes with me to take care of Doris now.

I knock softly, three times, on her door. There comes no response. I push the door aside anyways.

Doris is in her chair again. I don't think she ever moves from that spot. She sits and waits and watches for Something. A great something that will whisk her away from this hellhole. Maybe a ghost, or an angel, or Death himself. I know these things because she rants about how horrid this place is whenever I come. I think it's a never-ending rant, though. None of the other volunteers here seem to enjoy bringing her meals. They think I'm crazy for _asking _to take care of an unhappy hag like Doris.

She turns to look at us. Her eyes are narrow.

"Who are you? Why are you here?"

I step forward carefully. "My name is Quinn. I'm here to deliver your food."

Doris offers a bitter cackle. "Is that what you call it? I was raised on a farm, I know what that is. _Slop_, meant for animals. That's what we all are, isn't it? In here we're all just animals at the crazy farm. Suiting, really. I began at a farm, and now I will end at a farm."

I never talk much when I deliver her food. I try to place it on her table as carefully as possible, then escape. Escape, escape, out of this gray little cube that they keep her locked in. I feel sorry for her. I think that's why I keep coming back. If I were kept here, I'd turn into an angry old woman, too. I think she hates the people that bring her food because _we _can escape. She watches us leave in the afternoon, arrive a day later. We have the freedom to come and go, walk and run and escape this place. But she can't. She has to stay. Probably until her death.

"Who are you?" Doris inquires, craning her wrinkled head a little farther until she can clearly see

Kurt, standing uneasily in the doorway. He stares at her, eyes widening.

"I'm Kurt. We- we've met before."

Doris frowns at him deeply, as if trying very hard to place his face. Her brows release into a wide line, concluding that he is a stranger and he is lying to her. "We've never met before. I'm sure of it."

Kurt doesn't try to argue. He simply looks away as I set down the plate.

"The birds," Doris murmurs into her chest, losing interest in Kurt and returning her gaze to the window. "The birds."

I know I shouldn't, but I can't help it. I ask before I can stop. "What about the birds?"

Doris lifts her head, as if having forgotten she has company. "They don't come to the feeder any longer. The feeder needs to be refilled. I keep telling people that but they never _listen_. No respect for their elders."

I tentatively move closer to Doris. She points to the glass window, which peers out into a small courtyard. There are three metal rods jutting out of the ground, ending in bird feeders like a stem ends in a flower. The feeders were indeed empty.

"Do you have bird seed?"

"Of course. It's in that closet over there."

I hear a throat being cleared. Kurt is staring at me in the doorway, shaking his head ever so slightly. He doesn't think we should be putting bird seed in her bird feeders. I don't understand why he thinks this.

"Kurt and I will fill them for you."

The surprise on the lines of Doris' old face does a strange thing to my heart. I didn't think it was possible for me to feel things like pity or sadness any longer, but there it is, the strings of my heart being tugged at by this batty old woman's expression. It occurs to me that no matter how much you can care for a person, it's an entirely different thing to care _about_ them.

"That would be nice."

I hunt through the creaky closet until a heavy bag of birdseed is discovered. I manage to pull it across the soft white carpet, but I cannot pick it up. Kurt looks at me before bending to sweep it up in his arms.

"We aren't supposed to do these kind of things for the people here," he says to me as we go outside into the bleak courtyard. "Their family members are in charge of watering their plants, filling the bird feeders, and stuff."

He exhales sharply as he sets the back down on the ground outside a glass window. I peer inside, feeling slightly panicked when a pair of old eyes gaze back. I recognize Doris on the inside of the sheet of glass. She's watching us intently, like we're on television.

"Has it occurred to you that she doesn't have any family members to fill the bird feeders?" I ask him quietly, hoping that Doris can't read lips.

He doesn't respond as I unhook the feeders, dipping them low to the bag so he can scoop in the seeds. The air is chilly. Our breaths create curling clouds in the air.

The feeders are finally all filled to the very top. We've dumped quite a bit of the seeds, but I feel that the squirrels will be grateful of our sloppiness. Doris is still gazing up at the bird feeders when we go back to her room.

"I was wrong," she says, a strange glimmer to her eyes now. "I _do _know you." Kurt puts the birdseed back and tugs on my hand, knowing that we've already been with Doris for too long. Fish and Jungle are probably wondering where we are, but it's never mattered to me less.

"You do?"

She nods firmly. "I see you every day, outside in that abandoned garden."

I freeze up slightly, feeling the blood rush to my head. That garden was meant to be a private world for me, secret from all prying eyes. I can feel Kurt looking at me in confusion.

"It's about damn time we have someone around here that cares about the details. That garden's been let go for years now. It's a pleasure to see it getting attention."

Her words are surprisingly kind. Completely out of character, though I assure myself she'll be back to her cranky self once she forgets that Kurt and I were the ones that filled her bird feeders. But I can't believe someone has seen me working in the garden. How does she know? Do others know? Am I a joke to them, fixing something that can't be fixed?

To his credit, Kurt does not mention the garden for the rest of the afternoon. It isn't until the evening when the younger volunteers have to leave that he catches my eye. He comes closer to me, as close as I allow him to come.

"What garden was Doris talking about?" His blue eyes are filled with curiosity.

Without saying a word, I turn away. Kurt somehow understands, following me quickly down the hallway. We go down a few flights of stairs until we reach the bottom level. The army of rusted washers and dryers are loud tonight, creating white noise on the canvas as I approach the broken door.

I pull it open, leading Kurt into my secret garden.

It isn't much. A bit of an eyesore, really. There's still ugly patches and broken weeds and fallen leaves that have caked into mud over the years. But it is _mine_. And I am showing this piece of me to Kurt. He has walked through the doorstep of my world.

"How- how long have you been at this?" he asks in an amazed voice.

"Ever since I started volunteering here."

He is impressed. I can tell. He's looking around with raised eyebrows, lips slightly twisted as if he's about to smile. Maybe he didn't think I had something like this in me.

"It'll be beautiful in the spring," his soft, withered voice says.

We stay there for a little longer, in the peaceful silence. While Kurt explores, I crane my neck upwards to the sky. The Brookwood building rests beside us like a mountain. It's only then that I see a giant glass window on the side of the building, some kind of resting area for the residents. It must overlook the courtyard. I imagine Doris' wrinkled, once-beautiful face peering down at me as I toil away in the weeds.

I feel the ghost of a smile.


	11. The Honorable Grim Reaper Presiding

Rachel and Him are still dating. I think Rachel mentioned to the other Peasants how unhappy I was about the new relationship, because they send me dirty looks now. I've stopped eating in the cafeteria. Kurt joins me in the library for lunch almost every day now, but today he's absent.

I'm comfortable with being alone, though. Gives me more time to read.

I leave the library to go the the bathroom for just a second. It's empty in the hallway. All of the sheep are in their classrooms, obediently learning things that will not matter to them ten years from now.

One moment I'm walking, the next I'm being dragged down.

It's Him. He must have been waiting for me by the library doors. His hands are rough on my skin, dragon scales scratching bloody murder against my slippery costume. He drapes fingers across my mouth, making sure I don't cry out in shock.

"Don't you _dare _scream," He whispers to me once we're dragged behind a corner, cut off from the world, from windows, from eyes to see. We are alone again. My entire body is snap-snap crackling like frantic fireworks set off too soon. I'm shaking but I try to control it, not to let him see the affect he has on me. He already knows. He knows I fear him.

"What have you been telling Rachel, huh? You told her not to date me?"

I'm pushed up against the wall. My breaths are coming in and out too fast, not right, my heart is about to stop beating explode in my chest bloody the school floor. My eyes churn away from His face, His ugly monster face, snakes and insects crawling through my muscles.

"Say something!" He demands.

Me:

I choose a bad time to be silent. He takes me and my throat is in his hands. It's not a lock hold, it's not painful or cutting off air. In fact his grip across my throat is gentle, the touch of a lover before they go to bed. Stroking the throat he's kissed so lovingly. His gentleness terrifies me, because it's all a joke. He's mocking me. He's telling me that there's so much power behind these fingers. He could kill me if he wanted to.

"You think I'm a threat?" His voice is low. Almost a growl. I imagine him as a tiger, claws caught around my fleshy throat, striped tail lashing back and forth. The tiny emerald yellow eyes burn into mine.

_Yes. I fear you more than I've ever feared anything._

He leaves the question hanging there in the air like a body hanging from a noose. I can see it, swaying back and forth in the afternoon wind. He doesn't want me to answer the question, he just wants it there so I can see it. He already knows the answer.

_He _is _a threat._

I close my eyes as he nears me. He lowers his head a little, closer to mine. I'm shaking so badly. I can feel my skin jumping every time my heart throbs. I don't want to see the nightmarish things in his eyes.

He leans in and kisses me very slowly. His lips stay on mine for seconds, minutes, hours, days, years. I am motionless, shutting down just like I did the night of Rachel Berry's party. He doesn't try to shove His tongue in my mouth or hold me in any places. He just stands there, a hand on my throat, His lips eating mine.

The pressure of His disgusting mouth is gone. When I open my eyes, He is gone. I imagine him stalking away, wiping his mouth, leerily smiling at Rachel as be approaches her with the taste of me on his face.

He kissed me. He touched me. He was a part of me once again. I am too shocked to do anything. I slowly slip down the wall, rubbing and scratching at my lips until He is gone and I draw my fingers away to find blood there.

It wasn't a kiss. It was a warning. He thinks he has power over me, that he can steal my mouth and my words and my happiness. He's already broken me down so many times, it seems impossible that he still has a hold over me.

But he does. My shoulders convulse, my wings shuddering against the smashed wall, as I dip my face into my legs and tangle my fingers in my short hair. The lunch bell rings, announcing the Sheep are headed to their afternoon classes. A roar overcomes the school as the animals are let loose, crawling and screeching and laughing like hyenas. It is overwhelming noise all around me.

No one hears me scream.

It's harder on some nights. Especially on this night, when I am all alone. On this night, on the day when His mouth touched mine and his disgust entered my body. I want to wash away everything. I thought it was getting better, but it's getting bad again.

I am crouched on the edge of my tub. There is water there. It is filled with myself. I can see everything reflected back into me. My memories swirl with the bubbles like there is nowhere else to go. I can see my parents and my friends and my Real Self dying alongside my Pretend Self. Most of all I see Him and the baby.

I've thought about killing myself. Most of the time I can push the thoughts away. I would never do that to my family, to the world. Even if everyone hates me and thinks I'm a whore because of rumors He spread, there are still things on funny little strings that connect me to this world.

I don't know if I'm brave enough to kill myself. Or selfish enough, I guess. I don't think I would. But then I never thought I'd end up here, with a mouthful of dirt and a mindful of memories I cannot erase.

I slip into the tub, fully clothed. I'm too tired to take anything off. I close my eyes, dip my head under the water. I rest the back of my skull against the porcelain of the tub. My eyes are open underwater.

It's a trick that took a long time to master. I used to do it in the pool as a child. I imagine that I am in that pool. I'm at my grandma's house and my parents are there, in their swim suits, sunning on the patio while my grandparents make cold lemonade inside.

The water is a startlingly clear blue. Aqua, topaz, sky-blue. I hop in, destroying the motionless surface. Water rains on my parents. They laugh and rate my splash. Ten out of ten, they insist.

I go deep into the pool, into the ten foot where my father warns me about going. I go until my ears pop and my body tries floating up to the surface but I want to see how long I can take this sensation of my lungs bursting.

The water is clear and blue all around me. Maybe I'm a mermaid in the ocean, searching for pearls. Maybe I'm a dolphin, swimming with my family through the summer water. Maybe I'm a little girl, who once upon a time believed in a happy life. My hair is curling slowly around my goggles, dancing to a silent tune. It's unbelievably silent down here. I wish I could live at the bottom of this pool, and never have to break the surface.

"What if I killed myself tonight?" I asked into my phone. He didn't pick up. I didn't blame him as I sat on the edge of the tub, my toes touching the ice-cold water. "If I just close my eyes and breath in water, can I go back to the peace I found at the bottom of my grandma's pool?"

When I finished the voice mail, I hung up my phone. I placed it carefully on the surface of the sink. And I slipped into the water, where it became my grandma's pool once again. I exist at the bottom of her pool for ages. I hold my breath for years. I grow old at the bottom of her pool, just dreaming and bubbling and watching the combines dreams and bubbles turn into color that explode when they reach the surface. I look up at the water's surface. It's paralyzing to think there is nothing for me to breath all the way down here. I am locked in a glass box of water.

I'm falling asleep to the gentle tune of mermaids at the bottom of the pool. Then there's a hurricane. I'm being stolen from the peace. Angry hands pull at me, rip me from the bottom.

I watch the mermaids flutter away in fear, my parents watch in disbelief, my grandma's pool fades into darkened memory.

I'm on the floor of my bathroom, gasping for air. Kurt is on top of me, pressing his mouth to mine, filling me up with oxygen like I'm a balloon. I throw up water, my chest spasms as my heart stutters to life.

It's so cold. I'm soaking wet. My clothes cling to my skin like leeches.

I'm waterlogged everywhere. My ears are filled, sloshing back and forth on the inside against my eardrums. My eyes overflow with water, dripping from bubbles and soap. My hair is short and plastered to my scalp. I try to sit up, coughing, as breathing returns to me.

"You're alive," Kurt chokes out, as breathless as if he'd almost drowned in water as well. I realize he's crying. His face is red and wet from mingled tears and the water on my face as he revived me.

The world is still very dark and dizzy, fading this way and that.

"Fuck you, Quinn Fabray. Fuck you. Oh, my god, fuck you." He says this in a rush, gasping and cursing me for being so selfish, so stupid. He's furious with me. I can see the anger in his glinting blue eyes. "You're so fucking stupid. Why would you leave me that message. You were going to_ kill yourself_."

I cannot respond. My eyes flutter open and shut, the lashes stuck together and wet as if I've been crying. His words aren't angry, but soft, disbelieving, relieved. I relax deeper into the bathroom tiles, staring at my eyelids. Did I really leave him that awful message? I relaxed  
into the tub believing it had been a dream. I would never call someone and do that to them. Never.

I fade in and out for a long time. I can hear Kurt cursing me every time my eyes half open. I am exhausted, having drawn so close to death and been yanked back to life. It's a long time before I can wake up.

When I finally do, I am on my bed. It's growing dark outside, and the Museum is silent, as if my parents are still not home. Towels and blankets have been draped around me, and I am not alone. Kurt is beside me.

He's asleep. He breaths in and out softly. I can hear his gentle inhales and exhales. He is on his back, arms tucked under the blanket. His hair is mussed, pushed this way and that by sleep. Some of it is sticking straight up. He looks much younger when he's sleeping, much more at peace.

He's not under the blankets, as if he only laid down next to me for a second and fell asleep before realizing it. His clothes and hair are still damp, but drying. I feel warm and slightly wet now, but safe.

I called him just before trying to kill myself. I don't know why I chose him. But I did. And he must have come to my house immediately after getting the voice mail. I cannot forgive myself for doing something like that to him, but I also cannot believe my sheer luck. He happened to listen to his voice mail, happened to rush here, happened to grab me out of Death's arms. I don't know if I am blessed or cursed. Even in suicide I am a failure.

I glance up just in time to see his eyes flicker open. His eyes are a brilliant blur of green and blue this morning. It feels as if I'm looking into the opening wings of a butterfly.

"Kurt." My voice is hesitant. A question.

When he sees me, his eyes harden. He shifts away from me, slipping off of the bed. "I didn't mean to fall asleep. I meant to leave hours ago..."

I say nothing. I think my silence makes it worse.

Kurt turns to me. He's pissed. "You're so fucking selfish, Quinn. Why would you call _me_, out of all of the fucking people you could have called? You will never understand how horrible it was to pick up my phone and hear that, and to come here and find _you _half-dead in your tub. It's completely unforgivable."

There are words in his mouth that hurt me, even though I have no reason to feel that way. I've never heard him swear this much before. But as he stares at me through his spiraling, spiky anger, I know he is only furious because he cares. I refuse to lose him.

"You hate me." It's not a question.

He doesn't physically soften. But I know him. I can see something weaken, just a little. Maybe he can't bear the torture in my voice. "Of course I don't hate you, Quinn. I- I just don't understand why you would do that."

I watch my fingers tangle together. I'm procrastinating. I don't know what to say.

"You don't deserve this, Kurt. I'm a mess and I'm dragging you down with me. Just get out before you get too deep."

"Too deep into _what, _Quinn? Your craziness?" he spits.

Kurt's still visibly angry, trembling this way and that like a deer who's been grazed by a hunter's bullet. But under the layers of anger he's perplexed. For every single thing he understands about me, there are a thousands things he doesn't understand. I wish there was an easy way to take everything in my head and put it in his so he will understand why I am so selfish and strange and different. But I can't.

There's nothing left but the truth. "I can't escape myself, Kurt, but you still can. You can escape.

This is your chance."

Kurt stares across the room at me. The air crackles with electricity. I can see it riding around on the invisible currents, angrily zapping this way and that. "Okay, then what? I leave you today and then you just go back to that bathroom and try to kill yourself again?"

No. I'm not a coward. I hate people who commit suicide. I drowned myself in a moment of pure terror. If Kurt leaves me today, I won't be alive, but I won't be dead, either. He sees these thoughts in my eyes.

I can't stand him looking at the floor and then at me with that agonized look of his, it shreds what remains of my heart into tinier fragments. I need him, with all of his hope and his kindness and his aqua blue eyes, but I won't keep him.

Suddenly I'm no longer in the room with Kurt and the monsters. I am a child, my hands are smaller and my mind is still filled with dreams. I am at a park, running through a yellow field with my mother watching from a ways off. Something flutters on a tall flower above me.

I reach out my hands and cup the butterfly in my hands.

I hurry back to my mother, my little legs kicking wildly with youthful excitement. My voice is at the top of my lungs as I call my mother over, show her the little butterfly trapped in my hands. It is so beautiful, its soft wings beating miraculously against my skin.

My mother sees the dust on my fingers, and gently tells me to let the butterfly go. If I hold on to its paper wings, they could rip. I am heartbroken to think I've hurt the little creature, but when I open my hands, it flies away without damage. I sadly watch it disappear.

I am back. My room is around me. Kurt is still here, staring at me. I think he is the butterfly, and if I don't let him go I will rip his wings.

"I'm sorry. Just go." I'm tearing up. The water is back. Running over my cheeks. I can't stand all of these thoughts and these memories and these people mixing into something awful in my head. I want to cut Him out of my brain.

Kurt doesn't listen to me. He is closer to me now, hands gently cradling my skull and touching his forehead to mine. He is overwhelmingly close, I am shaking violently. There is a war in my mind. I relish his touch as much as I fear it. I think of Him and his rough hands and fight to not let Him destroy Kurt. Not my Kurt.

I win. I bury my face deeper into his chest. He has no idea what he has done for me in the past few months. How is it possible that this boy used to be a stranger, and now he is the only person I need? I think that Kurt makes me want to be a better person. He makes me want to forget about my monsters and Him and everything that's happened, and start a new life.

"I'm not going to leave you, Quinn," Kurt breathes out softly. With Kurt, I am not afraid of how close he gets. He is a different kind of person entirely. Where He is big and rough and cruel, Kurt is slender and gentle and kind. I allow him to stroke his fingers through my hair, touching the golden threads delicately.

I take a shuddering breath. I have owed Kurt the truth for many months now. It is time that he

Understands.

He holds me close as I cry and tell him, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," over and over again. He smooths my hair back and forgives me for calling him. He was only angry because he cares so much.

"Kurt... do you- remember the story- I was writing... at the bookstore?"

He does.

A tremor rocks through me, so painful I can feel pieces of my spine splinter apart and knock against each-other. This Truth has been locked inside for so long, I have to reach into the bottomless chasm deeper than I've ever had to before.

But I find it. I withdraw it from my mouth, pulling out my arm that is sticky with blood and saliva. I uncurl my fingers, show it to Kurt.

"I am ready to tell you my story."

On the night of Rachel Berry's party, I walked downstairs. I felt like an entirely different person. Or maybe I was having an out-of-body experience. I moved down those stairs one at a time, trying to remember how to walk.

He'd already gotten downstairs first. He was with a group of his friends from the football team. He was leaning against the wall, expression troubled. When he saw me, he turned. He was confused.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

I said nothing. I ran away from him. But of course he followed.

He caught me by my wrist in the kitchen, where there was food littered all over the place and empty cups of alcohol were strewn carelessly. He spun me around, dark eyes narrowed.

"What is your problem, Quinn?"

That was when the tears started. I couldn't hold them back any longer. I felt my entire body weaken.

"You r- raped me." I could barely believe the words that came out of my mouth. Did I really just say that? How was this happening to me? This shit happened to other people, people on the news and on TV. But not me.

His entire demeanor darkened. He leaned towards me, breath smelling of alcohol. "Don't say that word," he snarled. "That is _not _what happened, you bitch. Nobody is going to believe you, not after what I tell them."

I shook violently. The monsters were coming. I could hear them.

"If you tell anyone about this, I'll kill you," he promised me.

There was nothing to respond to that. I shrank away, turning into the meek sheep I would be for months. I stared up at him through disbelieving eyes. He was my boyfriend. How could he say these things to me?

"Hey, Finn!" someone called from the living room, poking their head in. "Come here, we have to show you something."

Finn slowly turned away from the intruder back to me. His face was made of shadows, the teeth already sprouting. I had to escape before the monsters found me, but they would find me no matter what.

I left the party, my life changed forever.

_Once upon a time, there was a girl._

_She was born with a pair of wings. They were soft and beautiful, like bird's feathers. Her wings were the color of snow, and turned golden when sunlight kissed the feathers._

* * *

On Christmas Eve, my family makes me go to church with them. I've managed to evade the duty of heading off to God's Holy House for weeks now. But it seems both of my parents are tired of my antics. I don't want to push them too far. So I put on a nice outfit, stuff myself like taxidermy into a plump coat, and we head out into the snowy world.

We arrive at church early so we can get good seats in the pews. Church is big and dark and quiet. Faintly heated. Dressed up in twinkly lights. There's a nativity in the lobby that's always been set out for Christmas. I study baby Jesus and his parents, gazing down in awe at their kid. He

doesn't look too happy.

We sit in the hard wooden pews, free to pick any seats because there's hardly anyone there. I look up at the sculpture they have hanging of Jesus on the cross. His silver eyes sweep the near-empty pews on the eve of his birthday. He finds me. I am frozen under his gaze.

I duck my head to avoid his eyes. My parents are both kneeling, their heads bowed, as it is custom to say your prayers when you enter the pew. I don't hesitate as I bow my head. This all feels very strange. Abnormal. Bizarre. It's an act I've practiced thousands of times in blinding lights and absorbed audiences, but today I have forgotten my lines.

_Hi God, _I think. I'm never quite sure how to address God when praying. Is it meant to be formal, or are we best friends? I am out of practice. I haven't been here in so long. I've pushed religion to the back of my mind, where it rests with all of my severed soul from my life as a Real Girl. I've  
managed to convince myself there cannot be a God in a world where these things happen.

_Well, I'm sorry that I haven't been here for so long. It's been a tough few months. I don't know if you're really there, if I'm talking to myself or if you can't even hear me. But I guess I'll talk anyways. Because in my mind, I don't choke. I can say the words I am thinking._

_I don't know what's happened to me. I've been through hell and I'm a different person and_ I _hate you for doing this to me. I know it's stupid to blame someone who might not even exist, but if I blame myself I think I will shatter. I fear that this entire new life is all of my fault. If only I hadn't gone to that damn party, gone upstairs to that room..._

I stop. I take a deep breath. My parents are both sitting in the pews again, but I am still kneeling. I decide that I don't care what they think of me. I'll kneel until my conscious feels a little bit clearer.

_I have absolutely nothing to be thankful for today. It is your son's birthday, and I'm supposed to be happy, and a year ago I was so happy, but now I am stuck. I don't know why things happen the way you do, but my parents have always taught me that things happen for a reason. If that's true, then what was your reason behind this, God? Was there a reason behind destroying me?_

_I'll probably never know the answers. But I'll always have this anger, this hurt. I'll never be the same girl I was. Maybe that's a good thing, because I know I wasn't much of a girl anyways, but at least I was alive. At least I was normal._

_I'm going to do this without your help from now on. You_'_re supposed to always be there and answer our prayers and send us angels to watch over us. Who the fuck was watching over me when I went into that room? When I had a miscarriage? Nobody was. We have failed each other._

_But I'm going to be okay with that. I don't need an invisible being who pretends to watch over us, when in reality there is only us. All I need is myself._

_You've taken away everything from me, God, you fucker. You've taken away my friends, my family, my popularity, my youth, my happiness. In loss I've learned about myself and the world around me. How it's an evil place, and you can't depend on anyone._

_I am here today not for myself. I am here for the baby that grew inside of me for a few weeks. The baby that was just a tiny creature I didn't understand. I was pregnant and I feared the bastard, until I realized it was innocent. And innocence died. I am here for the spirit of that baby._

_I am here for Kurt, who has done more for me that you ever have. He has turned into the only person I trust in this horrible world. He accepts me with all of my faults and my experiences and my silence. I think if there was only one thing I can be grateful for today, it is that you gave me Kurt._

_But this is my goodbye, I guess. I know I look really stupid right now because I've been kneeling here talking to someone who doesn't listen for a long time now. Church is about to begin. Praising you and your son and your religion that have failed me._

_I am finished, God. I am going to live my life without depending on anyone. And that includes imaginary people that live in the clouds and laugh as humanity crumbles.  
_


	12. A Ballad of Him and Her

Christmas Day is a quiet affair. My parents did not invite the Relatives, probably assuming- and rightly so- that it would go over with them about as well as Thanksgiving did. For today it is just the three of us in the big, cold Museum.

I awaken at six thirty in the early morning. It is supposed to be dark and cold outside. But there is strange light shifting into my window. I pull aside the curtain to discover the world has been transformed into a white blanket. It is snowing heavily, blotting out the trees and the houses and the footsteps from yesterday's old snow. I've never seen something so beautiful.

I curl up in my blanketed world, breathing slowly in and out, my mouth acting as a heater to the trapped world I am in. I can feel it getting too thick. The oxygen is almost all gone. I dig out a small hole, where fresh air seeps in.

I pull my legs up to my chest. My eyes are closed. I imagine that I am not really here, but outside in the snow. I am under a white blanket. I pull aside the blanket, realizing it is snow. It isn't cold, like I expected it to be. It is strangely warm.

There are snowflakes on my eyelashes and my lips that are chapped and bitten from my chewing, my arms pale, frozen against a gray snow-blotched sky. I breath deeper into the ground, a blonde angel among the snow demons. I listen to their soft growls, pointy eyes from the rolls of snow that conceal their scales. But in the snow I am not alone.

Kurt's frozen body rests beside mine. His hands hold mine, colder than the snow we dream in. He is alive, breathing snowy clouds into the flaked air. His red cheeks are checkered with soft white petals of snow. Blue eyes, piercing and clear and reflecting the brightened snow, read into mine. I know that I could lay here for the rest of time, and he would lay with me, forgetting the world.

I am gently jostled awake by my mother's sing-songy voice. I run a brush through my teeth, getting rid of last night's taste in my mouth, replacing it with penny-like cleanliness. My parents are waiting for me downstairs. A cup of coffee twirls heat out of my father's clasped hands from

his position on the couch.

The tree is tall and elegant as ever. It twinkles merrily, blinking and twisting like a many-colored ballerina. All of the ornaments are crystals and diamonds and rubies and pearls, dripping off of the real fern arms with a majestic superiority to other Christmas trees that are merely decorated in crafts and hand-mades and cheesy crappy lovey-dovey things bought from second-hand stores. I used to love how beautiful our tree was, but now it mocks me.

The presents are wrapped carefully, with a precision found in my mother's eyes and fingers. They greet me, my mother wishing me a Merry Christmas. I automatically say it back, even though I don't think I mean it.

My parents have gotten gifts for each-other, which they sort out under the tree. I give them my little wrapped presents. I picked them out, hoping it would mean something to them. They nod towards the tree, where all of my presents await.

We take turns opening. It's an old tradition. There's a radio somewhere playing classic Christmas music that loops and jingles and nickers in all the familiar places. The scent of breakfast twirls around our nostrils as we rip away the paper. Cookies maybe, muffins, bagels, maybe all of the above. I sip on my tea, my insides growling. The monster is hungry. It scrapes at my ribcage.

My mother actually seems to really love the pin I got her. It's simple and gold-plaited, with a single pearl glowering on the tippy top. It looks like the white eye of a beautiful deer, blinking and whispering in the light from the windows. She pins it onto her nightgown, all smiles. I think it's good to make her happy sometimes. I still love her very much. I'm glad she knows it.

For my father, I had no idea what to buy. I teetered between a cactus and a card with money in it, before settling on a mug. It's big and deep, meant for coffee and a man's rough grip. It has a snowman painted on the outside, with snowflakes carefully etched around him and his carrot nose. He seems to like it.

Most of the things my parents got me are fillers, meant to fill up the empty ocean under the tree and make it seem like we're all a happy family with lots of presents wrapped with love. I am given music CD's of some of the bands I used to love, clothes with colors and shimmers I used to wear.

The last thing I rip open, listening to the cries of the wrapping paper as its skin is torn apart, makes my eyes widen.

It's a book. Bound and leather, thick and strong, the pages unlined and sent into oblivion with blank faces. It's a journal, my parents explain, where I can write anything I want. They've noticed that I've been writing a lot lately, and thought I might like it. There is a package of expensive pens accompanying the leather book, where words will be created from.

I hug the book to my chest, tears pricking in my eyes. They watch me uncertainly, assuming that I like it, before wishing me a Merry Christmas and dispersing to get breakfast together. I stay in my position, huddled by the tree with my book in my arms. They _noticed._

* * *

I am upstairs, gazing at the blank pages of my book, when there comes a knock on my door.

It's my mother. She's dressed now, her face is less blank, more painted. She says I have a visitor downstairs that she doesn't recognize.

I follow her footsteps down the soft carpeted stairs into the front room of the Museum. Kurt is there, inside of the Museum and standing among the ancient relics and taxidermy bodies of dead creatures, hands deep in his pockets, talking to my father. I don't know what to say.

He sees me. He smiles. It's the kind of smile that touches the eyes, turning the blue into a crinkled shape.

"Hello. Merry Christmas, Quinn."

"Merry Christmas," I say back. This time it's not automatic. I mean it.

"I was wondering if you'd like to join me today? I'm going to be downtown and I'd like to have some company."

I am still surprised to see him in the Museum, my two worlds colliding. My parents are watching curiously as I respond. They are pleased to see I have a friend, surprised to see it is a boy, uncertain if I will remember how to speak.

"Sure. I just have to go get dressed."

Kurt nods. I don't want to leave him down here with my parents, where they will flock around him like vultures and pick the meat off of his bones until they realize he is nothing like Us, that he lives in a modest home with a father who earns a modest wage and a mother who sleeps in the ground.

"You can come upstairs and wait."

It is sad, but under normal circumstances my parents never would have allowed a boy upstairs with me. But now it is as if they are thrilled to see I still talk to people. So they remain quiet and smiling as I lead Kurt upstairs, away from the Vultures and into my world. It disturbs me to remember the last time we were both up here together, I was soaked and he was angry.

"It's good to see you dry," he remarks lightly, as if his thoughts parallel mine. I am quiet as I sit him down in my bedroom, grabbing random clothes from my closet. I leave the bathroom door cracked so he I can hear his voice as I change out of my sleeping clothes.

"Is it safe for me to come in?" he calls after a few minutes of shifting fabric. I pull on my shirt, smoothing it out over the lumps. In response I widen the bathroom door. He meanders in, taking a seat on the tub rim and watching me brush my hair. "How's your Christmas been?"

"Okay. You?"

"Pretty good. My dad and I are both introverts, so we like having a quiet Christmas. Honestly I'm surprised there isn't an army of Fabrays here today. I was afraid I'd have to meet the entire family."

He smiles a little.

"You're lucky you didn't have to." I don't like looking in the mirror anymore. I accidentally catch a glimpse of myself. Lips chapped, cheeks sunken, dark circles around my eyes. My blonde halo seems like a bird nest around my face. I touch it, imagining I can hear the soft chirps of baby birds.

"Ready?" he asks, straightening up. I nod.

My parents ask us to be careful and drive safely, since the roads have been transformed into a mushy ocean of black and white salt. We escape the Museum, running past my cherry-red bug and climbing into the warmth of Kurt's car. I'm reminded of the faded memory, from a different season, when I climbed into his car a drunken, bleeding mess. My expression must reflect my thoughts, because Kurt says:

"Don't think about That today. Okay? You're allowed to be happy today."

We drive through the mush for what feels like hours. The radio is playing. I don't know why, but today my throat feels clogged. I don't feel the need to speak. Neither does Kurt. He is the kind of person who isn't bothered by a peaceful silence.

It doesn't take me long to realize we aren't going downtown, when he gets on the highway. I don't ask questions. I trust that he is taking us somewhere good. He's got something on his mind, gazing thoughtfully out at the road as we drive.

He takes a snowy exit, leaving behind all of the storming raging cars running past us like racehorses and the highway is their track. We find ourselves in a magical part of Lima where there are no cars.

The roads are narrow, barely scraped for the weather, no buildings for miles. Occasionally we come across a country home peeking out with yellow, warm window eyes from the drifts of snow that falls gracefully, twirling on the wind.

He pulls off onto a dirt road. The car rattles unhappily as we drive across the snowy path, patches of dirt sticking out like bare skin amongst the white. An old farmhouse comes into sight. It's ragged and falling apart, with weeds frozen from the winter curling along the red brick and the porch sagging in places. The mailbox is crooked, as if someone hit it with their car and it stubbornly stayed in the ground. I see several old for sale signs half-hidden in the snow, most of them blown over and yellowed from age.

My Confusion asks: "Where are we?"

Kurt's answer is simple: "Home."

He pulls to a stop, the tires growling in the soft snow. The car shuts off, turning into a silent engine.

Kurt and I get out, falling into the crunchy crunch pattern of our feet sinking into the enormous white. I follow Kurt. I have no idea where we are. But from the way Kurt is looking up at the old building, this place is special.

He leads me carefully past the fallen branches and old car tires, towards the back of the farmhouse.

We approach an old barn, with chipped paint curling up like an old face, peering down at us as we go towards the door. Kurt wrenches the door aside. It's old, creaky, muttering in disagreement. Inside the barn is the Antarctic. Our breath freezes, comes crashing down before us.

"So when are you going to tell me what this place is?"

Kurt, with effort, closes the door behind him. "I haven't always lived in Lima. I lived here until I was eight years old."

Something about that sentence strikes a memory. I grasp for a second, before it comes to me. "You lived here until your mother died?"

He nods, seeming surprised I remember a detail like that about him. "Yes. This farm belonged to my mother, and she grew up here. After my parents married they moved in here. When my mother died, my father couldn't stand living in a place where everything reminded him of her. So we put it up for sale and moved out."

I look around the empty stalls, where animals might have once slept and dreamed. They are all empty and swept clean now. There's cobwebs dangling from every corner, decorating the cold barn with a sort of aged beauty.

In the corner, there's a giant pile of hay. It smells musty and thick, bringing a sense of warmth to the otherwise frozen haven. I wonder how long it's been in the barn, and if Kurt put it there.

"But it never sold. It stayed like this for years. When I got my license, I drove down here to visit the place from my childhood. Ever since then I come here every so often, and it's become a kind of secret world for me. It feels like I can visit my mother when I come here. You know?"

I don't know. I still have my mother. But I understand the ache he must feel whenever thinking of her, the mingled sadness and joy of returning to a place so deeply embedded in his memories. I know how it feels to create a secret world where you are safe.

I also know how hard it is to bring another person into that secret world. "Why did you bring me here?"

Kurt: "You showed me your secret world, the garden. I felt it would only be right if I showed you _my _world."

I am gazing at him, not sure how to feel. There's the feeling again, those tears that come and go at random points. I hug my arms around myself, looking away. I'm touched by his action. I know how it feels to have an intruder, and then to have a guest. I am a guest into his world. I have never felt more honored.

"Come here, I want to show you something." Before I can stop him, Kurt is clambering up the rickety wooden ladder, into the attic of the barn. I stay on the ground, looking up at the square hole where he disappeared. He pops his head back, peering down at me.

"Come on!"

I don't want to. I've always had a fear of heights. But I make myself climb the ladder, deciding not to look back as I ascend into the attic. It's even dustier and cobwebbier up here, with old boxes and what looks like a family of little critters in the corner. They watch us fearfully. Kurt assures me they're harmless, as long as I don't go near them.

"This is going to sound crazy, but when I was a kid, my dad showed me this trick. It always terrified my mom, but we'd keep it a secret from her."

Kurt's got a wild look in his blue eyes now. His cheeks are flushed, he's barely suppressing a smile. I smile a little at his boyish expression. Being back at his childhood home breaths new life into Kurt; it turns him into a happier person.

"And what would that be?"

Kurt points towards the hay in the corner. "When I was growing up, we kept hay up here. We threw it down into big piles, and my dad taught me how to jump out of this hole and into the piles of hay. It's dangerous, but if you do it right, it's so much fun."

I'm disbelieving. This seems so out of character for Kurt. Jumping around like a little kid again? I wonder if the musty smell of the barn has gotten to his head. That pile of hay is a good ten feet away, at a slight angle. If he thinks I'm jumping down to a certain death, he's crazy.

"You could break your arm!"

Kurt grins ear-to-ear. "That's the point."

I watch behind my fingers as Kurt prepares himself at the hole, and launches himself down with reckless abandon. He lets out a holler of excitement as he sails through the air, seeming to fly for a second, before crashing into the hay. There's enough hay to soften his landing, and when he flips over, he's laughing with pieces of hay stuck in his hair and his shirt.

"See! I'm perfectly fine, Quinn!" he laughs. "Jump!"

"No!" I exclaim, trembling at the sheer distance between where I crouched and the floor. Kurt made it okay, but that's because he's probably done this for years. I am absolutely terrified that I will fall wrong and break something. I flinch as I imagine the pain.

"Come on, I'm right here! Just do it. One-"

I back away from the hole, shaking too hard. My heart is thudding painfully at the base of my throat, where I can feel it about to push itself out of my mouth. I shake my head. "No, no, no way."

"Two-"

My brain has gone haywire. I'm frantically thinking of a good excuse not to act recklessly. There's so many reasons _not _to take the jump, they're overwhelming me. I inch towards the hole again, looking down at Kurt's face, his eyes shining and cheeks flushed with excitement. He's happy, I realize. And after a moment, I realize that I am happy, too.

I can think of a million reasons not to take the jump. But then it's that _one _reason to take the jump that surfaces in my mind. I think of all the hell I've been through the past several months, of Him and the miscarriage and my friends abandoning me and my parents distancing themselves from me.

And suddenly all I want to do is make the jump.

_"Three!"_

Before I can talk myself out of it, I push myself out of the loft. I find myself falling too fast, twisting in the air as gravity violently pulls me down. But in the heartbeats before I reach the pile of soft, scratchy hay, I am flying. I imagine my wings finally spreading and taking flight after being forgotten for too long.

Then it's over. I'm no longer held perilously in the air, but crashing into the hay. I fall head-first, burying my face into the yellow bristles. The overwhelming scent of hay comes over me, prickling into my arms and my neck and getting twisted in my hair. When I sit up, I find Kurt laughing.

And out of nowhere, I'm laughing too. It's been so long since I've really _laughed_. It feels so good to part my lips and emit all of the feelings I've been hiding for months, releasing everything into the cold air of the barn.

Is this right? Shouldn't I still be crying? Be upset? Be broken forever? I don't know if it's okay to laugh. It's too soon. I'll never heal. I told myself I'd never be happy again.

But I think, in that moment, all of that disappeared. I was allowing myself to be happy; maybe not forever, and maybe this was just a brief, passing second of time that would soon be swallowed up by the bad parts of life.

_Once upon a time, there was a girl._

_She was born with a pair of wings. They were soft and beautiful, like bird's feathers. Her wings were the color of snow, and turned golden when sunlight kissed the feathers._

_But no one else had wings in her world. Her wings were not beautiful to the people in her world, they were ugly. They scared the people away from the girl. She was unique and alone._


	13. Architecture of a Demonized Requiem

My knuckles rap three times across the door. There's a moment of held breath. Then the door is cast aside. A tall, tan man is standing there. He's got dark hair fringed with gray at the edges. Peering down at me behind thin, black glasses.

"Uh, hello." He blinks, cocks his head.

I force the words to come. "I'm Quinn Fabray, a friend of Rachel's. Is she here?"

"She's upstairs, yeah. Uh, come on in, Quinn. I'm Hiram," he adds, the door closing with a metallic clunk. "One of her fathers. Here, let me take your, uh, coat."

I'm confused for a second, before I remember Kurt mentioning that Rachel's been raised with two dads. I nod politely. I try to keep my gaze lowered, my face smiling. I can feel Mr. Hiram Berry studying me. Hear his thoughts. Rachel's probably mentioned me to him, or he knows my surname. Most people in Lima know who the Fabrays are, which I am no longer proud of.

"I'll call her down- Rachel, darling? You have a friend here."

"Oh, is it Finn?" I close my eyes when I hear His name in her voice. She sounds sing-songy and utterly twitterpated, as if she's prepared to burst into a love ballad at any moment. She descends the stairs, her smile vanishing upon seeing who the visitor is.

Hiram wisely chooses to leave the room. I think he can sense something is off, and assumes it's a part of the never-ending Girl World problems that he cannot help with.

Rachel's looking at me with unveiled contempt in her eyes. I don't flinch at the biting sound in her vocal cords, turned abruptly flat, when she asks why I am here. I'm getting better at these kind of things.

I swallow the gooey syrup that sticks up my throat. Open my mouth. "I want to talk."

Rachel shakes her head. Her bangs tremble along with her skull. She probably thinks we have nothing to discuss. She's not right.

"Look, Quinn, you and I aren't friends. You can't come here unannounced."

I wish for one moment, she'd stop being selfish. I want her- no, I _need _her- to listen to me. I have so many important things to say. If only there was a better way. I ignore the knives in her eyes, moving up her staircase. Goosebumps blossom across my skin. I remember these steps.

"Quinn! Hey, don't go up there!"

I don't hear her. I'm lost in a different world, which Rachel cannot see. I step through, wade through, force myself through, an ocean of dark blood. I feel sticky and afraid as I surf through the sickness.

I reach out a glooping, sticking, dripping hand to open The Door. I feel the edges go dark around my eyes. There is a circle of imagery pointing me towards The Room.

I open the door.

It's a normal bedroom. I step quietly inside of it. I'm pretty sure Rachel is getting mad at me but she can wait. The first thing I do is check up at the ceiling- no monsters. I walk towards the bed, hesitating and then touching it. The fabric is soft under my fingers.

It's actually a very pretty room. I assume it is a guest bedroom, as it is completely blank and normal with a pale palette and no pictures hanging on the wall. A window on the wall sheds light into the room. I gaze out. From here I can see their garden. I remember the spot where Kurt found me.

I have thought about coming back to this room for months now. Every time I stopped right before considering it because it just felt like too much. I have been afraid of this room ever since the day I left it.

Now here I stand, unafraid. I see it with fresh eyes. This hell, which bore the death of one girl and the birth of another, isn't a hell at all. It's just a room. The bed isn't full of insects and rocks as I remember it, it's just a bed. The ceiling is tan-colored and empty of monsters. This entire time I remembered hideous nightmare here, when in reality it was just me created the nightmare.

It's not the room's fault, or Rachel's fault, or my fault, or even God's. It was Finn, and Finn alone.

"Quinn, are you going to tell me what's going on or do I need to have my dads kick you out?" Rachel's sharp voice punctures the silence, brings me into the tide and leaves me washed up on the shores of reality.

I turn to her. I am going to tell her today, because she needs to know. She must. But I'm not ready to tell her with my voice. I'm not strong enough yet.

But maybe with words.

Hurriedly I reach into my bag. I get out the blank journal my parents got me for Christmas, that isn't so blank any longer. I sit down on the floor. After a moment of confusion I see Rachel follow suit out of the corner of my eye. I am busy flipping to a blank page and pulling out a pen. I scratch words onto the paper, then shove it towards Rachel to read.

**I'M HERE BECAUSE OF SOMETHING TERRIBLE THAT HAPPENED IN  
THIS ROOM. SOMETHING THAT CHANGED WHO I AM.**

Rachel raises an overly tweezed brow. I don't look at her. I stare at the floor, tapping it anxiously with my sneaker, waiting for her to give me back the book. I hear her take a deep breath, then the sound of the pen itching across the page.

**WHAT HAPPENED?**

I touch the pen lightly to paper. I have to tell her the truth. But I've never written it down. Writing it down makes it so real. I don't know if I'll be able to look at the words I've written. _Be strong be strong be strong_.

**AT YOUR PARTY IN THE SUMMER, I WAS RAPED.**

Rachel inhales sharply through her nose when I shove the book towards her. She looks up at me in disbelief. I don't meet her eyes. She opens her mouth, as if preparing to break the vow of silence. Then thinks better of it. Her hand trembles as she writes back.

**QUINN, I AM SO SORRY. NONE OF US KNEW.**

**WHO?**

Ah, yes. This is the hard, hard part. I've thought about this, rolling it over in my mind. I don't know how to tell her. I decide to just do it. I furiously place the pen to the page, pressing so hard the ink splatters slightly as I script the devil's name.

**FINN HUDSON.**

Rachel takes one look at the name I've written for her. She's silent for a single heartbeat, I know because I can hear my heart beating and am counting every single one in the silence, before the silence is destroyed.

"What the hell is your _problem_, Quinn?" Nice Rachel is gone. She's been replaced by Angry Rachel. The Rachel who's just been told her boyfriend is a horrible person. She throws the journal at me, hitting me square in the face. I stumble back, collecting up my things with shaky hands. I expected her to react badly. None of this shocks me. But it still hurts to see the disbelief.

"You have got a _lot _of guts, coming up to my house, telling me that my boyfriend is a-" Her mouth forms the word, but it gets stuck. She chokes. The word gets swallowed and gobbled up by the monster in her stomach, just like all of my words have been for months now.

I just stare at her. I have more nothing to say. I've told her everything.

"Get out!" Rachel screeches, looking like she's on the verge of tears.

I get out of there so fast, it feels as if I was never there. Outside the January snow is falling lazily, swirling this way and that in the cold air. I push through the slush, open my car door, and escape before Rachel has her dads attack my car with torches.

When I'm driving I don't really pay attention, my eyes are filled with red tears. I have to stop suddenly for a red light so that I don't smash into the bumper of the van in front of me. When I stop suddenly, the journal I threw on the passenger seat falls suddenly to the floor of my car. I look over. It's fallen open to the pages between me and Rachel.

**AT YOUR PARTY IN THE SUMMER, I WAS RAPED.**

The words stare up at me like a dead, bleeding body. My eyes fill with tears and I let out a scream. I swerve abruptly away from the line of cars, driving madly until I pull off on the side of the road. I leave my keys in my car and grab the journal.

With all of the might in my body, I take that damn book with all of those horrible words and chuck it into the empty, snowy field. It drops a ways off, creating a tunnel in the snow. I let out another scream of frustration, throwing myself back into the car.

I punch the horn a few times, hitting it with my fists until my hands are red and buzzing. I put the car into drive. I don't get very far before I'm looking out the window and think I'm acting like a child. I turn around, go back to the field. I hunt through the snow, walking carefully and pushing aside the frosty snow until I find my book.

It's soaking wet and angry, but I'll fix it. I get back into the car, clutching it to my chest, the snow melting into my shirt. I feel the warm tears threaten. I'm alone so I don't care. I cry, the warmth leaving trails down my cheeks like footsteps in the snow.

I eventually drive home through the muck. As soon as I get home I plug in my hairdryer and flip through the pages of my book until they are crinkled and bent, probably permanently, but warm, dry. I run my fingers across the words I've written in my story. I flip to a new page, sitting down and writing a little more.

_Once upon a time, there was a girl._

_She was born with a pair of wings. They were soft and beautiful, like bird's feathers. Her wings were the color of snow, and turned golden when sunlight kissed the feathers._

_But no one else had wings in her world. Her wings were not beautiful to the people in her world, they were ugly. They scared the people away from the girl. She was unique and alone._

_One day, when she was flying, people of her world came and hurt her wings. She couldn't fly away, and she cried to herself, grieving her broken wings. A stranger heard her crying and kindly helped her up._

* * *

When school resumes in the new year, I spend a lot of time cutting class. My grades have ceased being important to me. I end up in the bathrooms, catching snippets of gossip between girls, trying not to cough when the smokers come and paint the tiled walls with their smoke. There's empty classrooms I'll stay in, looking out at the falling snow, writing in my book.

The only class I don't skip is Mr. O' Connor's First Bell AP English Class. We've finished _The Glass Menagerie, _and are beginning _The Great Gatsby. _So far I like it. F. Scott Fitzgerald's writing style is very flowery, very descriptive. I find myself eating up the books Mr. O' Connors is assigning us. Since we have to read mostly out of school, he keeps us busy with learning English terms and doing writing exercises he knows will prepare us for English in college.

"I know it is January and the end of the year may seem far off to many of you, but the reality is that you have four months left of being sophomores. With the holidays behind us, it's an uninterrupted run to the finish line."

"Are you saying school is a race, Mr. O.C?" pipes up one of the bookish boys that sit in the front.

"That is exactly what I'm saying, Chris," he replies. The class laughs. Mr. O' Connors goes back to the board, where he writes something down. When he pulls away, we all read it to ourselves silently. Mr. O' Connors looks back at us.

"At the end of the year, you will be asked to write an essay about the topic of life. You will answer the question: what is the purpose of life?"

Unsettled Murmurs from the class. I glance at Kurt, who is scribbling notes down as if he already knows what he is going to write about.

"The books we've read this year, as well as the short stories and poems I have asked you to take a look at, are all leading towards this end-of-the-year essay. The purpose of writing is to create a work of art that can be perceived a million different ways. I'll be looking forward to reading twenty-seven  
of those perceptions," he finishes with a small smile.

* * *

I got kicked out of the library today. Someone finally ratted on me, that all students are supposed to be in their lunchroom to eat lunch. I usually don't eat lunch anyways, but they sniffed me out and threw me out on my butt.

Kurt usually joins me in the library, but today he had to take a test for Human Geography. So I find myself alone. There's no way I'm going to lunch. Not with Rachel and Him and everyone else staring, staring at me because I am a Freak.

I meander to my usual hangout. The bathroom is empty. I am grateful as I hurry into a stall. I had to pee anyways.

I'm unzipping my jeans when there's footsteps. Normally I don't mind other people invading my space here, because technically it's a public school bathroom. But these feet are accompanied by voices. And not just any voices: I recognize the voice of Rachel, and I believe the other belongs to Diva- er, Mercedes.

They enter, talking about nothing important. I listen carefully, my heart beating irregularly. They take turns going to the bathroom, wash their hands, look in the mirror, prime themselves like birds fluffing their feathers. They are oblivious to my being here. Something tells me this is not a good thing.

My feelings are surmounted when my name unsurprisingly enters their conversation. "Mercedes... I have to tell you something about Quinn."

"Alright."

I imagine the next part as a scene in a movie. I already seem to know the lines. I close myeyes, mouthing slightly as if this is my favorite part of an all-time classic.

Rachel [Hesitant]: "After Christmas, Quinn showed up at my house. I thought it was strange, since we're not- well, we're not _friends_."

Mercedes [Remembering a previous conversation concerning the Freak]: "Ever since that time she told you not to date Finn?"

Audience (aka Me) [Trembles at the mention of Him]: "..."

Rachel [Voice cracking now]: "Yes... well, she came and went upstairs into the guest bedroom where Finn said she seduced him. Remember, at that one party in August? The one where he said she basically took advantage of him?"

Audience [Trembling now with a new emotion: Anger]: "..."

Mercedes: "Right, I remember."

Rachel [Has to start and stop several times]: "Quinn... she- she told me that Finn..."

_Rachel stops talking_.

_Mercedes waits with expecting silence. She is confused._

Rachel, unable to say the word, gets out her phone. Her fingers shake as she types out an unspeakable silence.

Audience [Leaning toward stall door, wishing the view was better]: "..."

Mercedes [Reads Rachel's phone. Her reaction is slow.]: "Oh my god."

Rachel [Voice rising and falling, as if miserable]: "I know. And I got really angry and made her leave. But ever since she told me I can't shake what she said. I know that Finn told everybody _she _seduced _him... _but I don't know, Mercedes. I can't look at him without wondering if..."

Mercedes [Voice sharp]: "Listen, Rachel. Quinn is not the most reliable person. She could very well be making this up simply because she's angry that you two are together. But she's different now... more like _us_. And we would never lie about something as serious as... _that_."

Rachel: "What are you saying?"

Mercedes: "I'm sayin' you should think about it for awhile, and if it really bothers you, ask him about it. You'll be able to tell if he's telling the truth."

Rachel [Voice reduced to a pathetic whimper]: "You think Quinn's telling the truth?"

Audience [Quite literally on the edge of her seat, heart bursting]: "..."

_An ominous silence follows._

Mercedes: "I don't know, and neither do you. Don't jump to any conclusions until you have proof."

_The two girls look at each other, both clearly disturbed. The silent listener in the stall is filled with inexplicable joy because the world is starting to believe her. The scene fades to black._

_End of scene._

* * *

Something finally happens that I have been dreading ever since I told Kurt The Truth. I hear about it when I'm sitting in geometry, wondering why it matters how long the pole's shadow is and how this will be useful in later life. I'm doodling alongside the question when there come whisper whisper whispers.

"Did you hear about the fight?"

"You mean between Finn and that one guy? Yeah, I was there."

My Sixth Sense concerning Him crackles incessantly at the mention of his name. The pencil stops doodling. I tilt my head a little, trying to push the Teacher's drone out of my head so I can hear the whispers.

"What was it even about?"

"I dunno. We were all sitting in class and I saw them talking, and suddenly what's-his-face got pissed. Nothing really happened. It got broken up before anyone threw a punch."

"Shit. Wish I'd seen it. Who was the other guy?"

"Um I forget his name... he's in our grade I'm pretty sure. Kind of tall and skinny. The one guy we thought was gay for the longest time?"

"Oh yeah- Kurt, isn't it?"

I drop my pencil. It clatters silently to the carpeted floor.

"Yeah, that's it. Kurt, yeah. But it was crazy. I don't think I've even heard Kurt talk before."

"It's always the quiet ones."

I can feel my face turning red. I duck deeper into the crook of my elbow. My hair falls like a curtain, hiding me from the class. Kurt and Finn got into a fight. Kurt and Finn. Kurt and Finn. I don't think your heart is supposed to beat like that. It hurts.

The whispers lose interest in the scuffle and change topics. Class drags on. I am the first out the door when the bell buzzes. It vibrates the walls, and I swear I can see pieces of the ceiling falling as I hurry. My next bell is lunch. I have to find Kurt.

He's not in the library. Not in the lunch room, either. The Peasants are discussing him when I enter. They all look at me in surprise. I haven't eaten in the lunchroom in months. They have forgotten who I am.

Me: "Where's Kurt?"

The Peasants: "He has to eat lunch in the office. Don't disturb him."

I do exactly what they said not to do.

The Office is a frightening place. It's separated from the rest of the school, barred off by spikes and metal poles and guards glaring at me through shifty eyes as I creep past them. As I pass by I get a glimpse through the glass wall. I carefully crack open the door, slip inside. The robot behind the desk doesn't even look up at me.

"If you're here to see the counselor, fill out your name here," says the drone, metal fingers not missing a beat while typing.

Me:

"Did you hear me?" inquires the drone. It sounds irritated. I'd be irritated, too, if I was a robot condemned to indentured servitude behind a desk.

Me: "I was sent to talk to Kurt Hummel?" It's a lie. And comes out like a question. Luckily the robot hasn't been programmed to understand voice patterns, so it points towards a tiny office room to the left.

I don't bother knocking. Instead I push right through. Disturbances, disturbances.

Kurt's there. He's sitting in the middle of the tiny room, surrounded by file cabinets and encouraging please-be-happy posters. His lunch sits untouched. He looks up at me when I come in. The blue ocean is not calm today. It is a hurricane.

We look blankly at each-other for a moment. I speak first.

Me: "What happened?"

Kurt: "Nothing."

He's not happy with me. With Finn. With the world. His bluntness rubs me the wrong way. I sit across from him at the table.

Me: "What did Finn say to you?"

Kurt: "Don't worry about it."

Me: "Fine. You don't have to tell me what happened. But listen to me- this cannot happen again."

Kurt's eyes are suddenly wild. Stormy thundery lightning blowing winds angry water thrashed this way and that.

"I hate the sight of him," he says quietly. It's almost a snarl. "I don't know how you do it. How you can stay silent."

"I- I just do," comes my embarrassing, cowardly reply. I hate how weak I sound. I wish I was more like Kurt, more filled with spirit and anger and the will to push  
through. Kurt wouldn't stay silent like me. He is much braver.

His furious blue eyes are trained on me. "I can't be like you, Quinn. I can't see him and act like nothing is wrong."

I put two and two together. Finn has noticed that Kurt and I spend time together, maybe he's worried. Concerned about the secret. Maybe he dropped a hint, tested the waters. And Kurt reacted beautifully.

So He knows now. He knows that I told Kurt the truth.

I wonder what he'll do. If he'll do anything.

"You're wrong..." replies my soft voice, "-seeing him, makes me want to kill him. It hurts every time I hear his name."

Kurt's listening. I don't think he expected me to say that. But he knows I am telling the truth.

I fold, then unfold, my fingers. I am one hell of a procrastinator. I silently search for the right words. It feels as if I've lost my dictionary. I grapple in the muted air.

"When I told you... when I told you everything, Kurt, I trusted you because I knew you could handle it. Don't prove me wrong now."

He shakes his head. His jaw is clenched. He looks away from me, focusing on other things. I know how hard it must be for him. It kills him to know the truth and be helpless. I know he wants to fix me. But for right now this is the way it has to be.

"It's not fair," Kurt answers me. His voice shakes. He's so filled with anger. I know how deeply he hates Him. I didn't think it was possible for another person to hate Him like I do. But it is. "He deserves to be locked away. Staying silent makes things worse."

I know he is right. But I have no answer to that. I'm not ready to tell the truth. I still don't have the words. Maybe I won't find them for a very long time.

He runs a hand through his hair. "I will respect your choice. Your- your secret is not mine to tell. I will leave the speaking part to you."

Kurt looks meaningfully at me. I am fully aware of what he is really saying. He is right, and we both know it.

"Thank you," shudders through me like an ancient, deep tree being rocked back and forth in a storm. My branches quiver, but my trunk stays strong.

* * *

It is far too snowy to work in my garden for now. I cleaned everything up in preparation for winter, so I am satisfied for the moment. I gaze out the window, looking down at the blanket of snow covering my work. I can see statues peeping out curiously, wondering what this cold white stuff is.

Brookwood was very beautiful around Christmas, but now it is time to take down the decorations as the new year heads into the bleak, boring time between January and April. Spring still feels a long ways off, any possibility buried under inches of snow and ice.

When Kurt and I finish laundry for our wing, we are in charge of helping other volunteers take down decorations. Jungle and Fish have disappeared, replaced by two gangly teens under a lot of stringy hair whose gender remains uncertain. Kurt tells me that Jungle and Fish have volunteered there for longer than him, and at some point you just get tired of feeding old people.

Kurt and I attack the windows first, which have paper mache candy canes and twinkly lights stapled around the perimeters. I work on peeling away the Santa Claus and reindeer stickers from the windows while Kurt perches perilously up on the ladder, taking down lights.

After a few tiring hours of taking down the decorations, Olga finally relieves Kurt and I for the day, as if sensing we've reached the point that we just want to torch all of the chubby elf faces and "Merry Christmas!" ornaments.

Kurt and I always walk out to our cars together, but today I tell him to go on without me. I'm not staying after for the garden, but for something else.

I knock quietly on Doris' door. I hear a creaky voice say I can enter. I push aside the door, finding Doris not at her window for once. She is in bed, the blankets tucked up to her tightly, listening to the radio that is playing tired Christmas tunes.

"Hello, Doris," I say with a smile.

Doris squints at me. She's getting better at recognizing me. "Quinn?"

I nod and go towards her bed. She looks older today, if that's possible. Her long gray hair hasn't been brushed, and there are deeper bruises on her arm. Olga told me that Doris' legs have gotten quite weak, and sometimes she walks around and accidentally knocks into things even though the nurses here have repeatedly told her not to get out of bed. She's just stubborn like that. I admire her spirit.

"How was your day?" I ask politely.

Doris turns her ear away from the radio. "I'm bedridden, according to that horrid Olga woman. They think I fell, but they won't listen. I just got these bruises because I hit my arm against the window when watching the snow fall."

I can't help the sad smile on my lips. In Doris' sickened mind, she probably really does think that the bruises were an accident. She might not remember falling at all.

"Did you have a good Christmas?"

"No." Her old voice cracks, and she clears her throat in frustration. She thinks for a second, trying to remember the right words. "I was alone all day."

"Do you have children?"

"Yes. But they don't visit. They put me here because I was a burden to them." She frowns, looking at the radio with sharp emotions in her old eyes. She isn't oblivious like many old people are.

She knows why most elders end up in a nursing home with no visitors on Christmas.

"I'm sorry," I murmur. And I really am. It's wrong that an old person like Doris should be so alone on Christmas. I know the people that work here try to engage the loners, but it's not the same. They are all strangers to her. You need people you love on Christmas day.

"So you were married?"

"I still am," Doris says suddenly, touching the golden band on her ring finger. It sparkles dully in the evening light. "Tommy just isn't around anymore. He died a great many years ago."

I try to imagine what it must be like to love someone for years and years, only for them to be suddenly gone. It makes my hurt heart a little bit. "Were you and Tommy madly in love?"

Doris pulls back her lips, revealing a set of chipped, yellowed teeth, in laughter. It reminds me of when an old dog pulls back their lips and people mistake a smile for a snarl. "Oh, yes. We were high school sweethearts. Married for sixty-two years, since our anniversary was just a few weeks ago."

"Congratulations."

Doris gazes off at the wall. Maybe she can see Tommy's spirit now, resting beside her and forever watchful of his beloved widow until she joins him. "What about you, dear? Is there someone you're in love with?"

"I'm too young to be in love, you know."

She chuckles. "Nonsense. I was your age when I met Tommy." Her gaze turns thoughtful for a long second. I imagine what her mind must look like. Filled with thorns and twisted vines from years of sickness. "You know, your friend Kurt reminds me a lot of Tommy. I think he has a good heart, just like Tommy did."

Hearing her say this makes my throat thicken. Not because I cannot speak, but because she has shared something deeply personal with me. And she is absolutely right. Kurt is one of the best people I know.

I talk to her for a little longer. But I can never stay with her for long when something takes over and she asks who I am. I say goodbye and leave when it grows dark outside. It's bitter cold and the darkness creates freaky shadows, but I am kept warm by Doris' words.

* * *

**A/N: **This story has been with me for so long that I have had plenty of time to write while listening to music. I've gathered a few songs that make me think the most of _The Butterfly Effect _and the relationship between Kurt and Quinn (Qurt?). If you don't already know them, I would love it if you listened to them. If this story was a movie, then these songs would be on the soundtrack.

**Chasing Cars** by Snow Patrol  
**No One's Aware** by Jack Savoretti  
**Stay** by Hurts  
**Strange and Beautiful** by Aqualung  
**Vienna** by Billy Joel


	14. My Garishly Cyan Lullaby

It's as if He waits until Kurt is not here to make his move. Kurt is absent today, a head cold banging at the inside of his skull rendering him bedridden for today. I miss his presence in the hallways, the classrooms, the library. I've grown so accustomed to having him by my side.

He chooses to come up to me in Spanish. We've broken up into partners to practice conversing in 100% espanol. Nobody knows how to speak Spanish, though, and none of us are particularly inclined to do so anyways. Our teacher looks on unhappily as we break into groups and begin to gossip, smack our lips, whisper, giggle giggle. In English, of course.

This is a class I don't have with Kurt. Sometimes Mercedes is friendly and lets me talk to her, because neither of us have anyone else. But today Mercedes seems terribly busy texting, and I am left sitting alone in the middle of socializing teens. I allow myself to feel lonely for half a second when someone cures my loneliness. Him.

He swims up to me, a shark in a shallow body of water, a _tiger _shark, with stripes and fangs and glittering eyes. I wonder what His angle is. He cannot hurt me here, not in class, not amongst pairs of eyes. I try to stand strong, thinking of Kurt, as the shark approaches.

"Where's your boyfriend?" Finn asks me in a friendly voice, a smile widening his mouth. I stare uneasily at the gleaming fangs he's just revealed, dripping with saliva and blood. Maybe the latter is my imagination.

Me:

Finn draws a little closer. I flinch when his thigh brushes against mine.

"You told Kurt," he says plaintively. It is not a question. More of a statement. My English teachers would be proud.

It's so hard to look him in the eyes. My face burns foolishly. I keep my eyes lowered, scratching my pencil uselessly into my notebook. I begin to hear my heart beating in my ears. How is that possible?

He lowers to my height and his breath tickles my ear. "Rachel's been acting weird too, lately," he breathes. I jerk away, preparing to hide under a table, or run out of the room declaring a medical emergency, or something... My mind is overheated. I need to get a grip.

Before I can, He does it for me. Under the table he grips my hand, and I am frozen.

"You're tarnishing my reputation, Quinn," he murmurs. "I am not happy with you."

Fear prickles like shards of ice down my back. I close my eyes. I think of Kurt. He'd want me to be strong.

"I don't have to be afraid of you."

Finn raises a brow. His grip tightens on my hand. An amused smile plays at his lips, the lips I once kissed passionately. "Oh?"

I rip my hand from His. "You're just a human," I say softly, talking more to myself than him. "Humans can be defeated."

The amusement vanishes. He keeps his hands to himself, but I can see him undressing me with his eyes. I bet he's imagining killing me. For the first time I see the real danger in his eyes. A knife gleaming reflective. He wants to silence me, maybe as much as I want to defeat him. We make a lovely couple.

"Be careful who you tell your stories to, little Quinn," Finn says to me in a low rumble. "You're putting them in danger, too."

Kurt.

Rachel.

The teacher intervenes then, sending everyone back to our seats since none of us seem to be doing the assignment. Finn and I are separated to opposite sides of the room. I sit silently, ramrod straight, staring at my hands. I can feel Him watching me.

He controls me. He destroyed me, ripped me apart. Left a rotting carcass. Kurt came, he helped put the pieces back together. I am no longer a skeleton of dripping muscle and rotting nerves, but becoming a body again. A person. Because of Kurt.

And I will be damned if I let Him hurt Kurt because of me.

In the last seconds of class, I look up at Him. He's still staring. A slow grin stretches his lips.

I stare right back. I can feel the fear retreating into the back of my mind.

Only fire remains.

* * *

My mother's birthday draws near. January has crawled by, but February is only days away.

Her birthday is on the second day of February. Last year, I hand-made her a card and picked out a beautiful sterling silver bracelet for her with the help of my father's wallet.

This year her birthday is uncertain. I can still make her a card but my father and I seem to not be on speaking terms. He's distanced himself, inch by inch, for months now. I can see him crawling away, retreating deeper into his turtle shell. He used to be a very good man, but with each day I see more and more of his flaws.

It's funny, how as a kid your parents are the strongest people in the world. They're like super heroes to you. And then you grow up, and realize that your parents are just as flawed as you are.

I'm in my room, trying for what feels like the hundredth time to start my essay for Mr. O' Connors, when there comes a soft knock on my door. I find my father's face attached to the sound. He is dressed in his business suit. Must have just come home from work.

"Quinn, I was wondering. Would you like to go shopping tonight? For your mother's birthday, I mean?"

I'm surprised he was bold enough to enter my orbital. I'm even more surprised to hear he wants to buy things for my mother. I can't remember the last time I saw them kiss. I can clearly remember the last time I heard them fight. (Two nights ago).

But I'm not going to decline going to get things for my mother. So I agree. A few hours later, after another uneasy dinner filled with painted smiles and fake words bubbling above our heads in the air, my father and I leave for the mall.

The mall is a place I used to rule. As I enter under its holy roof, I realize this is the first time I've been here since summer. And I've been reduced to that kid who goes to the mall with her parent. Oh, well. Too bad I no longer care what the world thinks.

We find the mall virtually empty. It's seven o' clock on a Tuesday night; I guess it isn't a cool night to go shopping. Normally filled with sprawling teenagers acting like jungle animals and purchasing things with their parent's money, I catch a few mall joggers and some middle-aged couples window shopping.

It's quiet, save for the music in every store we pass by. It's like flipping the channels of a TV.

Finally my father settles on a jewelry store called _Barb's. _We go in, and I perch quietly behind my father as he explains to one of the workers he's looking for a birthday present for his wife, and money is not a problem. I hate him for throwing in that last bit. My family's wealth is a mixture of old money and money my father has churned up in the click-clack suitcasey office work he seems to excel at. He's always loved being rich, and I think my mother enjoys it, as well. I always accepted it as a part of life, but now that I've seen how other people live, it makes me despise rich bigots like my father.

To the worker's credit, she remains unimpressed and shows my father around to several glass cases filled with beautiful sparkling jewelry anxious to be bought and have a place in someone's jewelry box. I inspect each glass box, admiring the way the jewels sparkle.

I look up when I hear a peal of soft, girlish laughter. It's a different worker, this time a young woman. She's talking to my father, both of them all smiles. A few of my father's words drift towards me, and my ears prick up. Is my father flirting with that woman? I study their body language. Blushing, smiling, hair touching. It seems to add up.

I stare at my father in disbelief. How long has my father been flirting with other women? And why has it taken me this long to notice? I realize with a pang of guilt that it's because I haven't spent any time with my parents out of the house. The worst part is that my father is flirting with the pretty lady as if it's a daily thing.

Tears come to my eyes. My family is broken. I tell myself that it's not my fault, but I do a terrible job of convincing myself. Without taking another look at my father, I turn and exit _Barb's_. I find myself sitting on a lonely bench in the empty mall hallway, staring at the candy machines and movie posters and the occasional mall walker.

It takes my father some time to leave the jewelry store. When he does, I see a crisp white bag dangling in his fingers. He bought my mother a jewelry, from the store where he flirted with another woman. I find myself sickened.

"Quinn? You okay?"

I am used to the words in my throat being stuck. But right now it's all I can do to hold them back as my father joins me on the bench.

"You were flirting with that lady," I say, voice sounding almost childish.

My father's eyes meet mine. He doesn't try to deny it.

"Quinn... your mother and I are having marital issues. It's adult stuff, you wouldn't understand."

I am shaking. There is nothing more in the world I hate than when an Adult talks down to me. They all think just because they've lived longer that they know more about life than I do. They can talk down to me and call me a child and say there's things I wouldn't understand because I'm just a dumb kid. But my father has _no idea_. I have been through hell, and he's too buried in his own problems to see how miserable his daughter has been. To give a shit about me or his wife who's growing apart from him. He has no right to talk down to me when I've been through enough shit this past year to understand his _adult problems_.

"What wouldn't I understand about you cheating on your wife?"

That does the trick. As if I've pulled the trigger, his mocking patience turns into anger. He leans closer to me, shaking so that his blonde hair comes out of its wave. "I am not cheating on your mother. Stop talking about things you don't understand."

"You're a horrible father," I manage to choke out. Then the goo returns. Falling through my throat like poison. I can say no more. I am angered by the words that just disappear. My father waits for more childishness he can fight, but I am silent. He nods and gets up. He tells me to not mention this to my mother, before leaving. I have no choice but to get up and follow him. He is my ride home, after all.

I shouldn't be surprised, really. Their marriage has never been perfect, and now the weight of having a crazy kid is the last straw. I wonder if they'll get divorced in the future. If my mother will ever find out. If there's more women I don't know about.

What really breaks my heart is the happiness in my mother's eyes on her birthday when she opens her present. It's a very pretty necklace. My father knows his jewelry well. As she thanks him and gives him a chaste kiss on the cheek, I realize I cannot further destroy their marriage by telling my mother. Because I can see it on her face that she loves him, despite all of their fighting. There are things you cannot control in life, and this is one of them.

When she turns away to admire the necklace in the mirror, my father turns to look at me. His eyes say it all. I cannot bear it any longer. I duck my head and tell my mother I'm happy she likes it.

Later that night, I am at my laptop. I stare at the blank page, at the little white line that blinks every second, waiting for me to type. I am thinking about Mr. O' Connors and the purpose of life and my parents. All of it mixes in my mind and turns into a monster.

I fall asleep into a nightmare that night. The monsters quietly watch me sleep from their place on the ceiling, relishing my fear.

_Once upon a time, there was a girl. She was born with a pair of wings. They were soft and beautiful, like bird's feathers. Her wings_  
_were the color of snow, and turned golden when sunlight kissed the feathers._

_But no one else had wings in her world. Her wings were not beautiful to the people in her world, they were ugly. They scared the people away from the girl. She was unique and alone._

_One day, when she was flying, people of her world came and hurt her wings. She couldn't fly away, and she cried to herself, grieving her broken wings. A stranger heard her crying and __kindly helped her up._

_The girl was amazed to see that the stranger was a boy with wings. They were many colors, __like butterfly wings. He had lived his entire life with wings, and had learned how to soar high in the sky without fearing the people of their world._

* * *

Kurt calls me every night now. It is always him that calls, almost on eight o' clock every time.

We talk about many things. At first I don't talk at all and he supplies the entire conversation, easily moving on whenever I don't reply or there is just static silence. In the beginning I am confused. I have no idea what he's trying to do. I'm frustrated by the thought he's trying to fix me.

I learn quirks about him that I never would have guessed- that he is terrified of spiders, he loves peanut butter toast in the morning, and enjoys swimming. He tells me his dreams of moving to New York when he graduates from McKinley, and becoming a part of Broadway. And he tells me his fears. He is afraid of falling in love, he misses his mother deeply, and fears there is nothing after death.

I tell Kurt things I have never spoken out loud before. I tell him that I am afraid of growing old. I confess that I fear turning into my parents, and that my children will hate me. I secretly love to read books. I have a fear of darkness. My father flirts with other women. I tell him all of these things.

I gaze up at my ceiling as he talks. The monsters are late tonight. The sun has set and the shadows have returned. But I see no crinkling eyes, no snapping teeth. The monsters never come when Kurt's voice is in my ear.

In late February, I meet his father for the first time.

Having finished _The Great Gatsby, _we've moved on to _Native Son_, by Richard Wright_. _So far it's a really good book. For class, Mr. O' Connors wants us to create a theme from the novel and draw an artistic interpretation of the theme. Kurt and I partnered up, and since I don't want to bring Kurt to the Museum again, he suggests we can go to his house. He knows it might be hard, because of the last time I was there, but I tell him I'll be fine.

When I ring the Hummel doorbell, it's not Kurt that answers, but his father. Kurt's father is middle-aged and balding, and wears a baseball cap with a logo stitched to the front. The first thing that strikes me is that he looks absolutely nothing like Kurt, and the other thing is how sad he looks. Not the had-a-bad-day sadness. The deep, tiring sadness that infects your very bones. The kind of sadness that inhibits you after you lose something very dear to you.

"Are you Quinn?" he asks roughly. He's looking at me curiously.

"Yes."

"It's nice to finally meet you. I'm Burt." He extends his calloused hand, and I shake his hand.

There seems to be permanent oil under his nails from the garage he works at, and his hands are rough, but he is careful not to grip my hand too tightly.

"Finally meet me?" I echo politely.

"Yeah. Kurt won't shut up about you sometimes." There's a smile hidden in Burt's features, but I can see the smile in his eyes, which twinkle slightly. It feels like I'm looking into Kurt's eyes, and it is in this striking similarity that Burt can claim Kurt as his own. "Hey, Kurt! You have a visitor."

I hear the basement door open, and feet across the floor. Kurt comes around the corner, smiling when he sees me. "Hi Quinn. I see you've met my dad?"

I nod, smiling.

"I hope he hasn't pulled out the baby pictures book yet," Kurt jokes, looking at his father with humor on his face. He's a little taller than his father, much more slender in pale, but right next to each-other I can see the similarity. I wonder if Burt looked anything like Kurt when he was younger, and in turn I wonder if Kurt will look anything like Burt when he is older.

"I'll show her those later," Burt retorts, chuckling.

Kurt shows me down to the basement. It's hard not to remember That Night as we descend into his world, but I try to push it from my mind. It's been getting easier recently, I've noticed. Easier to think about other things. Maybe one day I'll be able to move on.

We sprawl out on his floor and discuss _Native Son _for hours. After settling on a theme we get right to drawing. He brings out a big poster board from the closet and we draw in pencil first, then color in later. I'm surprised to see how talented he is at drawing.

"You never told me you're an artist."

He smirks. "I wouldn't call myself _that_."

When we finally finish, our fingers are splotched with colors from the markers and ink from the pens. We settle down in front of his television, feeling that we deserve a break. Kurt leans against the board of his bed, and I lean against the hard wood as well. We're quiet for awhile. I'm thoughtfully silent, not really focusing on the program we're watching.

I nudge his sneaker with mine. "Kurt?"

"Mmm?"

"Do you think we'll see each-other after high school?"

He senses there is something deeper in my voice. He sits up, flipping on the mute button. "Why do you ask?"

I have left so many things unsaid over the past several months. It's time to say exactly what I'm thinking.

"I just want us to always be friends. And I don't mean graduate and only talk at reunions. I mean- I always want to know you. Even when we're older."

Kurt's aqua blue ocean eyes are still. I imagine that they are the color of the eye of a storm. "Then we will," he says simply.

"We'll always be friends?"

"Yeah," he murmurs. I think back to the beginning of this school year, of the first time I heard Kurt's voice in Mr. O' Connors' class. How I was terrified that he remembered the night he let me sleep at his house. How we were strangers sharing a secret, unable to even look at each-other. And now here we are. So much has changed.

We lean against his bed again. But this time I feel warmth as his hand finds mine, and I let our fingers intertwine. I close my eyes, feeling the ice beginning to melt. I am the happiest I have been in a long time.

* * *

The ice is melting.

It's been a long and hard winter, but at long last Spring has poked out its warm head from the ground. March has arrived, and with it the world is slowly yet surely warming up. It is a very tedious process, and sometimes it feels as if nothing is happening.

But then there's a flicker of green somewhere. The trees are beginning to resemble healthy creatures once again, and not the skeletons they've been all winter. The cold grip winter has held on Lima is loosening. I imagine ice cracking far off in the distance.

I've never been more excited for spring. Kids at school can sense that spring is coming, too. The students are filled with ants, moving and laughing and itching to escape the cold. They are all so excited that they forget about me. There are less torments in the hallways now. My books stay firmly clasped in my hands. There are no red words awaiting me at my locker.

Even though I no longer go to lunch, I know that Rachel still sits there with Him. It makes my brain malfunction and stop thinking, all the fans whirring to a stop and all the bolts falling out of place. If I don't see Him, then I can continue breathing. I can reach deep inside my metal robot mouth and pull out the buttons that make me afraid.

I managed to steal a tall stack of blue slips from my Spanish teacher's desk, which excuse a student from class. They're magical little pieces of paper. Wave them in any teacher's face and they'll forget you were late, absent, mean, all of the above. That's how I got Kurt and I back  
into the library. We are now there during lunch because a Mr. Smith believes we need to have more time reading during lunch.

Before, when I was a Real Girl, I rarely read. It was because I was a Pretty Cheerful Plastic Blonde Cheerleader who slaved hours away at Coach Sylvester's command. By the time those hours were served I barely had enough energy to take a shower and fall asleep. Now, as a Pretend Girl, I don't stop reading.

After discovering the haven of the library, I come in here often. I skip classes and just read books. During lunch I read. I've read dozens of books already this year. They keep my mind off of the World and keep me focused on the words written in tiny font across the pages. Books have always fascinated me. They're just thousands of words printed on pieces of paper that you look at. They shouldn't be interesting, but they are. You can create an entire world with just words. It's a different kind of power.

Kurt reads with me. Sometimes we'll read the same book. Other times we'll find different books and read quietly next to each-other. There's days when we talk about books; conversations mostly of Kurt talking about books and I quietly listen. He loves reading, too. He says his favorite book is _To Kill a Mockingbird._

Mr. O' Connors gave me a list of books he thought I might enjoy. Most of them are classics, but there are some modern ones, too. I'm finishing one up by an author named Laurie Halse Anderson when a kid next to me drops a bunch of books. I automatically get up and help collect his books. They're all dictionaries, and I'm reaching for one that's fallen haphazardly open and pick it up. I'm about to close it when the definition next to my thumb leaps out at me from the page.

**butterfly effect **(n)  
(Physics/General physics) the idea, used in chaos theory, that a very small  
difference in the initial state of a physical state can make a significant  
difference to the state at some later time

[from the theory that a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world

might ultimately cause a hurricane in another part of the world].

I stare at that definition, the clockwork turning in my head. I close the dictionary and hand itback to the boy, before going back to my seat. I sit down, running a hand through my hair. It's grown a little bit since I cut it last August. It's almost down to my shoulders now. It feels good to have my hair again. It's like having a piece of myself back from the dead.

I go to the girl's bathroom, lock myself in a stall. I've spent so much time in these bathrooms over the past months, it almost feels like an extended part of my home. I know it's not sanitary and it's almost always cold/smelly, but I've been safe here. It's time to give back to these walls that have protected me for so long.

I take out a Sharpe that I found lying in the hallway this morning, like a little floating fish in a giant ocean. I rip off the cap, stick it between my teeth as I begin to draw.

The wall is blank, a piece of paper waiting for ink.

I start at the bottom. I create a wall, dividing the ground and the sky. There needs to be bushes, to start with. They're thick and curly next to the tall grass that sprouts towards the sky. I draw hundreds of flowers, some of them real some of them made in my imagination, all little black outlines traced onto the brick wall right next to the toilet.

Next I draw a tree. It is thick and sturdy. It's been through storms and wind and maybe even struck by lightning, but it still stands strong. I create its trunk first, ribbed and barked and there's even a hole where an owl peeks out. Then I draw its branches, strong arms reaching up to the white brick sky. I go back and draw in the leaves, thousands of little squiggles, blowing in the afternoon wind.

Around the tree is a tall fence. I carefully draw each picket for each piece of carved wood, paying attention to the chipped paint and the claw marks from squirrels running across it in the spring. The picture starts to come together. But I'm not quite finished.

There's statues spread among the flowerbeds. Their eyes are still but their mouths smile, as if grateful for the sunshine warming their stone backs. That makes me go upwards, reaching as high as I can go, to draw the sun high in the sky.

When I am finished, I take a step back. My Sharpe creation is almost perfect. There's flowers and flowerbeds and statues and grass and tulips and roses and thorny bushes and the sun shining down with wisps of clouds in the sky, and in the middle of the garden is a tree. It stands strong, looking out at me from its two dimensional spot on the bathroom wall and smiling.

My hands ache from all the drawing and twisting of my wrist, and my hands are bleeding ink from all the times the Sharpe has crashed against my fingers. But it's not quite done. I lean forward, wrist flicking one last time.

A butterfly flutters through the garden, just like it will in my real garden.

I smile and admire my work. I can almost feel the soft spring breeze, feel the sunshine on my back, see the last bit of frost melt. The smell of freshly cut grass and blossoming flowers overcomes me.

The seasons have changed.

* * *

**A/N: **When I was writing _The Butterfly Effect, _in my mind I kept imagining it as a movie. That inspired me to create teaser posters for this story, if it were to be made into a movie. I put the links to the pictures on my profile, and I'd love it if you took a look at them. I love how they turned out. As a side note, they work best if you pull them up on separate pages and look at them together. Cheers!**  
**


	15. Keyhole to Limbo

It's the end of March. The snow is melting quickly now. The sun is peeking out from behind the cracked frostbitten sky, eager to make her return.

For the first time in months, I don't have to bundle up in a long sleeved shirt. I crack open my drawers and find a short-sleeved tee with a heart on it. The material feels soft and fresh, and it feels like a fresh breath of air against my skin that's been cooped up all winter.

With each passing day, I am no longer a globbing, sopping pile of nothing. I start to feel stronger, like the tree in my garden picture. I've revisited that drawing several times now, and in the places where I can see custodians have tried in vain to wash the image away, other students- invisible hands- have reached out and touched up the ghostly lines I created. I am strengthened by their silent support. I begin to remember how it feels to be a Real Girl.

There is something I still have to do, though. I've thought about it for a long time, but I had to wait until winter broke and the streams rushed again with cold water, eager to flow after an entire season of being frozen.

I dig through my parent's collection of glass bottles. I finally find a small one, rinse it out with shimmering water, and cut out a long strip of blank paper from my journal that is now almost completely filled with words and pictures and jotted down thoughts from the middle of the day.

I find a pen that has ink, test it on a scrap piece of paper, and write a letter. It's very long and filled with words, things I cannot say out loud but things I am allowed to think. I write until my hand aches and there's splotches of ink all over my hands. I pull back, eyes reading the letter, murmuring the words to myself.

It's perfect.

I carefully roll up the message and tuck it into the glass bottle. I steal a cork from my mother's wine bottle and stuff it into the small glass bottle until it is secured tightly.

When I go outside, I don't go towards my cherry-red bug. This is a job my car cannot perform, I'm afraid. I have to go back in time. I go into the basement and dig through a bunch of old boxes and toys until I find my bike. It's a little flat and rusty, but it will do the deal.

I throw my leg across my bike, tuck the bottle into my pocket, and grip the handlebars. They're soft and rubbery under my cold fingers. I kick off, pedaling hard down the street. It's a quiet, lazy Sunday morning. Not many cars are on the road. The ones that are swerve carefully around me.

The wind rushes over me, laughing and dancing in my hair, as if it's missed me. I come to the top of a hill, and push off like an airplane. I gain momentum quickly. I close my eyes and feel the wind crashing through my body, rejuvenating my soul and waking up parts of me that have been asleep for ages, dusting off the rest of my insides. The cold spring air on my bare arms feels like _freedom_.

When I get to the bottom of the quiet hill, I turn off the road, onto a gravelly path that leads into the park. I pedal peacefully under the trees that will begin to bloom with young, new leaves any day now. I can hear kids playing on the play-set a ways off, and dogs bark. There's even a few birds chirping softly to themselves high in the barren branches.

My bike comes to a stop at the bank of a creek. It's deep and muddy, with patches of ice still floating through it. The quiet sound of water trickling reaches my ears, of the miniature water-fall a ways off. The water is empty now but soon the fish will come back, swirling though the mossy depths, their scales glimmering silver in the water if you catch a quick glimpse of them.

I reach into my pocket and withdraw the message in a bottle. I look down at it, holding it tightly in my hands. It is a letter to the baby that lived within me for a few precious, terrifying weeks. Not a day goes by that I don't think of my miscarriage, and I wonder why God chose to let the baby die before it even lived. I don't know what would have happened had I never miscarried, and I guess I never will. What I do know is that Finn did a horrible thing to me, and he placed that creature inside of me. It could have grown and been born and become an amazing adult that solved the world's problems and fell in love and maybe have children of their own.

It never will reach that greatness, but maybe now, I can live a life worthy of that kind of greatness, for the memory of the unborn child. But before I begin that  
life, I must let some things go.

So I crouch down on the muddy, slippery bank with emerald grass hinting to the surface, press my lips to the glass in a farewell kiss, and let the bottle go. It gets taken by the current immediately, tossed gently through the rocks and the gravel. I watch it splash softly, the letter inside containing words that might never be read, or that might be found years from now by a stranger who I will never meet, but they will know my story.

The bottle goes over the tiny waterfall and it bobs off until it gets swallowed up by the shallow creek. I imagine it flowing through the creek until the water gets deeper and wider and it becomes a river, and then the bottle and my story will sail towards the ocean where it will live forever.

* * *

_Once upon a time, there was a girl._

_She was born with a pair of wings. They were soft and beautiful, like bird's feathers. Her wings __were the color of snow, and turned golden when sunlight kissed the feathers._

_But no one else had wings in her world. Her wings were not beautiful to the people in her world, __they were ugly. They scared the people away from the girl. She was unique and alone._

_One day, when she was flying, people of her world came and hurt her wings. She couldn't fly away, and she cried to herself, grieving her broken wings. A stranger heard her crying and __kindly helped her up._

_The girl was amazed to see that the stranger was a boy with wings. They were many colors, __like butterfly wings. He had lived his entire life with wings, and had learned how to soar high in the sky without fearing the people of their world._

_The winged boy healed her wings. Over time, her wings became beautiful again. The girl was __afraid of flying, but the boy held her hand and taught her how to fly once more. There came a day when she was no longer afraid, and she flew high in the sky with the boy._

* * *

With winter finally behind us and the last snow melted, spring is in full swing. The sun shines and trees are growing once more.

My garden at Brookwood has lost the last of its snow, and is now a healthy, happy garden. Kurt's helped me go buy plants, and together we've dug holes and planted them. He even managed to figure out the wiring on the fountain, so now it flows with water.

With the end of the year closer than ever, I still have no idea what to write for my essay in Mr. O' Connors' class. I asked Kurt, and he's already finished his essay. He told me that he thinks the purpose of life is to touch other people's lives, so that everyone's actions of kindness affect the world, making it a better place. I think it's a great take on Mr. O' Connors' question, and tell him that he'll probably get a good grade on the essay.

I don't want to let Mr. O' Connors down. He's been very kind to me all year, reading my work and helping me improve, turning me into a better writer. More than that, I feel that I owe it to him as the student of an amazing teacher, to do well on the very last assignment he ever gives us. I'm struggling with answering his question, though. What _is _the purpose of life? I've sat down a hundred times to start writing his essay, and each time I get the purpose wrong. I just cannot find it.

One afternoon in April, with the last of winter finally gone and the warmth of spring upon us, the sophomores were shocked when they received news that a certain star couple had finally split. I discovered that Rachel finally broke up with Him. Everyone had their own version of why she dumped him, but I knew why. Maybe if we spread the word, He will never hurt anyone ever again.

I am washing my hands in the girl's bathroom when a miniature girl enters the bathroom in the corner of my eye. I see her stop when she recognizes me, scrubbing hastily away at the sink, then she ducks away towards a mirror.

I don't expect her to say anything. I'm yanking at the paper dispenser, drying off my hands and using the paper to turn off the faucets, when she speaks. I'm surprised so I don't hear her at first. Instead I turn to her.

Rachel's looking up at me. Her bands are perfectly straight, plastered against her forehead. There's a bow in her black hair and she's wearing what I deem to be a poodle skirt. I look down at her blankly. All I can think of is how she screamed at me when I tried to help.

"I owe you an apology," her mouth is finally moving. I listen silently. "...and a thank-you." She stops, prim and curt and efficient as ever. I imagine this is something she's been dying to check off of her check-list. Her hands are behind her back. She nervously rolls back on the balls of her feet, concludes I am not going to say anything, then surges ahead.

"When you told me those things at my house, I thought I didn't believe you because I assumed you were hatching a scheme to break me and- ah, _him_- up. But now that I look back, I realize that I didn't believe you because I didn't want to be proven blind. If you were right, that meant I- and the rest of the school- had been blind to what you were trying to tell us with your short hair and your sudden change in style and antisocial behavior. I hate nothing more than being wrong, but I was wrong, and selfish, and mean towards you. You spoke up when me and a lot of other girls were willing to ignore Finn's ways. You're the bravest girl I know. So thank you."

She says all of this in one long breath. By the end of her little speech I'm looking at her fearfully wondering if she's going to explode from lack of oxygen intake. But I think this is just the way she talks.

When she's finished and her words have registered, I don't know how to respond. She meant everything she said to me, this I am sure of. I have just gotten so accustomed to not being spoken to that it's hard for me to remember what it's like to reply.

"You're welcome." I take a stab at some kind of response, but it seems to do the trick. Rachel beams at me. It hurts and I have to squint a little because it feels like the blinding sun is smiling down at me, but I am grateful for her words. It means that she understands.

* * *

My dreams shift one night from the colors to dull, from the closed lids I am behind to the open doors that peer into the world. I find myself in a room. It's a simple room. The walls a simple color, a couch pushed up against the wall, a door to the right. A waiting room, maybe.

There's no windows. I'm sitting on the couch, looking around at this small room my mind has conjured up.

I realize I am not alone. I look to my left to find something sitting next to me. It is a strange creature. I don't think it is human, but it doesn't look like any kind of animal I've ever seen.

It sits up like a person, swathed in clothes as if trying to mimic the way a human dresses, but there's something off. The way it cocks its head, or moves its fingers. The strangest part is that I am not afraid.

"Hello?" I keep my voice low, so as to not disturb the silence of the room. I watch as the thing turns to look at me. To my surprise there is a face, resembling a human's. A stranger's face. It is a soft, quiet face. I see sadness etched in the lines of its face. I believe the face is male, but I cannot be sure.

"Lucy." I hear a voice, this time rough and deep, like a man's voice.

"Who are you?" I know I should be afraid of this stranger, but somehow I know this is a dream. I am aware that this is not real, and he cannot really hurt me. Besides, I can see it in his curved face that he is not an enemy to me.

The stranger shifts towards me, called closer by my voice. "I was not given a name, but I am the embodiment of the horrible things that have been done not only to you, but to people all over the world."

The abstract person turns his head a little bit. I see swatches of clear skin, like glass, were I notice silver clockwork turning in his skull. His eyes widen and narrow to focus clearly upon my face.

"Do you mean what Finn did to me?"

His face is becoming clearer every time I talk. It seems like he's remembering more of himself with every new word spoken. His face is rugged, nose a little crooked, hair a dark color. There is unspeakable sorrow planted deep in his colorless eyes. "If that is what you interpret me as, then yes."

There are elements to the dreamworld that make perfect sense, even though in the waking world they would make no sense at all. The rules work differently here; in this room, I somehow understand that this man is a messenger who was created the day Finn hurt me. He is the reason that I have been followed by monsters for months, felt bugs crawling through my skin, imagined Him as a beast with dripping teeth. This man is the Fear that was born the day Finn attacked.

"Why have you come to visit me?"

The man relaxes into the cushions, folding his hands in his lap. He is seeming more mortal with every breath his takes, his form becoming less monstrous, his cheeks flushing with blood and life. He's coming down to my size now, the size of a human being.

"I am not visiting, Lucy. I am saying farewell."

I will my body closer to this strange man. He seems so real, even though he is a character of my imagination. "Before you leave me, will you answer my questions?"

He answers with the ghostly voices of all my fears. "I will try."

The eyes are becoming colored now, the colors bleeding into his eyes. A lovely green color. His somber eyes watch as I form my first question. "Why did Finn choose my life to destroy?"

A shake of his head. Not angry with me, patient and thoughtful. But he needs me to understand something. "On that night, Finn did not choose to destroy anything any more than Kurt chose to perform an act of kindness. These things happen because they are meant to happen."

I try to grapple what he is telling me. It feels as if there weights slowly being lifted from my sagging shoulders. "My life was meant to be destroyed?"

He touches his hands together, as if trying to create a way for me to understand better. "Yes, but not to be destroyed. To be built into something better."

I feel it is unfair at first, for him to speak in riddles like this. But I think he is telling me that like his questions, life is rhetorical- it is not meant to be understood, only to be enjoyed. "Will I ever be able to forgive Finn, and move on?"

He smiles sadly across at me, the expression like a painting on his canvas, mortal face. "You will never truly forgive him, Lucy, but you will try. There will come a day when you realize what he did to you placed you on a new path with a new destiny, and this will help you move on."

There's a sudden flicker in his form. His face appears less mortal, more ghostly. His time is running out. As if hearing my thoughts, he looks towards the door, hearing things I cannot. "I must leave soon, Lucy."

As much as I do not want this piece of me to go, I want him to. I am ready for him to walk out of that door and take my nightmares with him. "Is Kurt in my future?" I ask softly.

His green eyes are serious. "Kurt _is _your future."

Something swells within me. I finally understand. Feeling at peace with my destiny, I allow myself to ask the final question. "So what happens now?"

The man reaches deep into his pockets on the pants that have blossomed during out conversation. He withdraws a pencil. It is held gently between his fingers before he places it in the palm of my hands.

"Only you can finishing writing your story, Lucy."

The door handle jiggles. We both look up. It feels as if there is something outside of the door. I imagine some kind of creature, waiting for the stranger beside me to return to wherever it is nightmares go when a person wakes up.

"You have to go?" I ask.

He nods.

I watch as the man straightens to his feet. He goes to the door. Before touching the handle, he looks back at me, sitting on the couch with a pencil clutched in my hands. "Good bye, Lucy. And good luck."

Before I can thank him, the door opens. He vanishes, stepping into the blinding, and I vanish as well. I am back in my bed. I open my eyes. My heart is racing, there's sweat pooled at the nape of my neck.

For the first time in months, I look up at my ceiling and find it empty. The monsters are gone.

* * *

**Author's Note: **I was inspired to write this scene because when the story was finished, I felt that I still needed a scene between Quinn and the personification of the "evil" that was done to her. It's very abstract, but I wanted to see Quinn come to terms with what happened and get the answers to her questions. I hope it wasn't too confusing!


	16. Open the Slaughterhouse

April showers are heavy, raining almost every day now. I imagine the last of the frost being washed away by the rain. I hope that these showers lead to May flowers. I imagine them sprouting up everywhere, checkering the world with a splash of much-needed color. The emerald lawns and return of fully-leaved trees will be a welcome change.

There is only a month and a half left of school. Final exams are almost over, even though I've failed almost all of my classes. I'm strangely okay with that, though. I know that next year will be better for me.

On the days it doesn't rain, Kurt and I go over to Brookwood to work more on my secret garden. Today the world is dry. I already have my bag filled with garden tools, prepared to dig homes for more plants. The bag rattles against my back as I tell Kurt to meet me at the bathrooms. Before I go home, I want to go add something to my Sharpe drawing. By now the custodians have given up on trying to wash it off, after so many strong, anonymous hands stood up and fought back for me.

I go into the bathroom, finding the stall against the wall. I admire it for a second, before taking my bag off of my back and uncapping my Sharpe. I poise my hand to draw when I hear the bathroom door open and close. I remember that my stall door is open, and am turning to close  
and lock it when Something is in front of me.

It's Him.

I am motionless, the Sharpe dropping from my hands and clattering to the bathroom floor. I stare at Finn Hudson, my mind frantically screaming and overworking itself as I remember his face, how it smashed into mine on that Night and how much of me he has destroyed.

"You told Rachel that I raped you," Finn says through gritted teeth. He's tall and imposing, and there's veins bulging in his neck and his dark eyes have been lit on fire.

I find myself backed up against the brick wall, my spine pressing into my drawing that fearfully watches the scene below unfold. My eyes flick back and forth to my only escape; the bathroom door he is standing in. He has trapped me once again.

"I warned you," he snarls, his throat vibrating with all of his pent-up fury. "I told you not to talk like that. People get the wrong idea. Now Rachel's telling people I'm a rapist. It's a fucking lie, and it's all your fault, you _bitch_."

Finn attacks. It's just like I've imagined in a thousand times, the monster invading my secret world and murdering me. He doesn't have claws or teeth or red eyes; he's just a boy. All along I've been afraid of a boy.

He grabs me and pushes me up against the wall. I feel his fingers vibrating with strength against my ribs as he smashes me against the wall, before pushing me to the floor. I am in shock, my skull throbbing from the pain of hitting the brick wall. I collapse to the floor, scrabbling and gasping and blood flowing from my face as he repeatedly punches me into the floor until my nose cracks. His body is all over me like it was that horrible night, holding me down, pinning me, because he is more powerful and I am just an animal that won't scream out for help.

He pushes deeper against my back, flipping me over and grabbing my throat. His fingers don't loosen their grip. His eyes are wild, mouth torn in a garish clown smile. He is laughing at my pain.

"You won't scream," he whispers to me, straddling my bucking body and forcing me into the ground. I am dizzy and my face is screaming and the sickening, salty scent of blood reaches me. "You won't scream, because _you want me again. _Just like that night we had together, huh?"

I stare up into the eyes of my murderer, the villain of my story, a beast, the person I hate and fear more than anything in the entire world. It's just like that night all over again. I am trapped against the wall with his body smothering mine and his hands tangled in my bloody hair and he is grinning, grinning because he knows I won't scream. Knows I _can't _scream.

I realize in a moment of frenzied blood and heartbeats and kicking that I am not going to let this happen. Not this time.

It is then that the last piece of ice melts in my throat, slipping down into me like a little, helpless icicle. And I have found my voice again.

"STOP IT!" I scream, I scream so loud and hard it hurts my throat but I don't stop because I am screaming for all of the months I have been silent and I have my voice back and I am fighting back this time _I am back  
_

"HELP! GET OFF OF MF! HELP!"

We are both shocked that I actually screamed. His momentary disbelief turns into red, boiling hot anger as he swoops closer to my face. The sound of the bathroom door smashing open makes him turn his head, and there is a blur as someone comes in and tears Finn off of me.

"You bastard!" the blur screams, rolling on top of Finn and smashing his face in. I am dizzy and the bathroom is spinning, but through the haze I realize it is Kurt. Kurt is on top of Finn, smashing his fists into Finn's face. Finn must have been taken aback by the sudden attack, but regains his strength and pushes Kurt off of him.

He shoves Kurt into the wall, where he cracks against the bathroom mirror and falls to the ground. An inhuman snarl comes from deep within Finn as he plows into Kurt, ripping deeper into him with every punch. Kurt fights back, trying to push him off, but the struggle is hopeless. Kurt is not as strong as Finn.

Even though it hurts to move a muscle, I push myself out of the stall. I reach into my bag, and withdraw a gardening tool. I pull away with a small shovel gripped tightly in my fingers.

Without thinking of anyone but Kurt, I throw myself at Finn and press the blade deep into his neck.

Immediately Finn freezes. He lets go of Kurt and crashes his body against the floor, where his back digs deep into the tile just like my back dug deep into the mattress. He stares at me with fear in his eyes. I push the blade deeper into the soft skin of his neck, where a small trickle of blood rushes forward and betrays Finn as being utterly human and utterly mortal.

_I am so tempted_ to just slide the blade right through his neck and kill him. I could. I have the power now because I am no longer afraid. Finn breaths in and out quickly, his heart hammering in his chest. He knows that I can kill him. He knows that I want to. That I will.

"Quinn."

Kurt speaks weakly, dragging himself towards me. His hair is astray and there's bruises blossoming around his eyes where Finn hit him and there's blood trickling from his mouth and nose. But he is strong enough to reach his hand towards mine, slowly, and wrap his fingers around mine on the blade.

"Don't do it," he whispers.

I stare at Kurt, into his blue eyes filled with nothing but love for me, and I let the handle go. It falls to the floor with a metallic clatter. I take a sharp breath, my heart beating once more when it seemed to have stopped while I pressed the blade into Finn's throat.

Kurt kicks open the bathroom door and calls for help. People are there immediately, teachers and a few students and security guards who may have heard the struggle. The bathroom becomes noisy and filled with panic, screams, disbelief. Finn has fallen unconscious a ways off, and people buzz around, trying to understand what has happened here.

I ignore them all. I am a ways off, in the corner with Kurt. We are detached from their world. Kurt holds me close to him, his hands on my bloody face, his forehead pressed against mine. Our eyes are closed, our breathing is ragged, our hearts may never stop beating this fast. But for the first time since last August, I am alive. I have defeated Him, the Monster, and my fear. I am finally free.

Kurt's breath trembles across my cheek. He's holding me like he never plans to let go, and I want to exist in his arms for the rest of time.

"I was outside the bathroom, waiting for you," he whispers, shaking.

"I know," I say, voice cracking. Tears surface in my eyes.

His blue eyes open, touching mine with all of their fear and excitement and disbelief. "If you hadn't- hadn't screamed for help- I would have stood out there the entire time, while he killed you. I didn't even see him go in."

I shudder deeply to think of that. I lock my fingers in his dark hair, loving how his warmth feels against mine. "But I screamed. And you came for me."

Tears run down his cheek. "Of course I did," he whispers. I close my eyes and bury my bloodied face into his neck, before our peace is interrupted by the Adults and the Real World. "Of course I did."  
_  
__  
_

The late May suns beats down on me as I pull off into the Brookwood parking-lot. Today is the day. I got a call from Olga Young herself this morning. Today is The Day that Doris is considered healthy enough to go outside.

This is a game we have played for weeks now; every time I come, I ask her if Doris is strong enough. The garden is anxious for Doris' arrival, but I have to wait until Olga thinks Doris is ready. I've asked so many times that it's routine now, as if we've scripted our sentences. Olga always says no, but maybe next time.

Doris has watched me work on the secret garden for a very long time, I think even longer than she is letting on. I know she loves gardens, because she has told me stories of the garden she and her ghostly husband Tommy bloomed together. When Tommy died he was cremated and the little silver jar placed in abovementioned garden. I think seeing me and sometimes Kurt outside digging holes and watering plants takes her back many years.

I've promised Doris that I will take her outside when Olga gives us the thumbs up; today is finally that day.

I go to immediately to Doris' room. She is sitting by the window, gazing out at the birds feeding cheerfully on her birdfeeders. Her hair is long and combed, and her eyes are clear, reflective of the window she's gazing out of.

"Doris," I say softly.

She turns to peer at me. For a second I am afraid she will forget me but then she smiles. "Quinn. It is so good to see you here!"

I go towards her, leaning down to talk to Doris. "Doris, do you remember the promise I made to you in the spring?"

Doris' brows knit together. "You promised to show me your garden."

I touch my hand to Doris' much colder, wrinkled one. I can feel her wedding hand smooth and cool against my skin. "Yes. Today Olga said you can go outside with me. Today is the day."

Excitement flares like a wing in her eyes, when it is hushed by uncertainty. She has not been outside in many months, but she trusts me. Very carefully, I help her into her wheelchair. We push off. She seems to be nervous. "I- I haven't been outside in some time, Quinn."

"I know," I tell her as gently as possible. "It's going to be okay."

I help her into the elevator. I let her punch the basement button, which lights up like a firefly on the silver wall. We bump along before coming to a shuddering stop at the basement level.

The doors slide open, to reveal the laundry room. The washers and dryers are noisy as I lead Doris past them, towards the door I've escaped through a thousand times by now.

"Ready for my secret garden?"

"Yes," she says firmly, any signs of fear gone from her old papery face.

I push the door aside, which no longer creaks thanks to Kurt. I wheel her out onto the grass, where the three of us stand and breath in the garden. Even though I have worked and watched it grow, stepping back into it gets more magnificent every time.

If someone was asked if this was the same wretched garden that had been left to die a year ago, they would have said no. Nothing about this place resembled the miserable, weedy, dead pit it used to be.

It's still small, and there's still a stone path leading through the courtyard. But now the weeds have been pulled out from between the stony path, and the leaves and mud that had rotted over it for years was all gone. The beds are filled with flushed, sweet-smelling flowers of every color. The soil is dark and cool and happy, the flowers sprouting with their colorful diamond faces turned towards the sun. The weeds and dead plants are no more, replaced by life.

A stone fountain sits in the middle of the garden, bubbling and flowing happily. The garden is filled with the song of birds from the trees high above, and the sounds of cars going by and people laughing. The fence has been straightened out and painted with a fresh coat of white, startlingly bright against the emerald grass. It's still a secret world, but now it no longer belongs to just me.

"Oh," Doris says, sounding disbelieving. "Oh, it's- it's just beautiful. It reminds me of the garden Tommy and I kept at the farm." She speaks softly now, I can see the years of bitter age fading from her face, soaked up in the warm May sunlight.

"Thank you," she tells me sincerely. "You have- given new life to more than this garden."

There's a childish glow of excitement on her face as she asks me to wheel her to certain parts so she can smell the flowers. After awhile I hear the door push aside. Our haven has been interrupted. It is Olga. She squints in the sunlight. Even though she hasn't said so, I know she is deeply impressed by my work here.

"That's enough for today, I think," she tells us, visibly fighting the urge to gaze around at the colors. I look down at Doris for approval. She nods, relenting. I think she knows that there will be many more days I bring her out here to smell the flowers. "Fine by me."

We help Doris get through the door. I pause in between my worlds. As I watch Doris go I silently thank Jungle and Fish for being jerks and switching the names that fateful day all those months ago. Had it not been for them, I never would have known Doris.

I look over my shoulder at my secret world. I give it one final gaze before making my garden a final promise. _I will always return._

* * *

_Once upon a time, there was a girl._

_She was born with a pair of wings. They were soft and beautiful, like bird's feathers. Her wings __were the color of snow, and turned golden when sunlight kissed the feathers._

_But no one else had wings in her world. Her wings were not beautiful to the people in her world, __they were ugly. They scared the people away from the girl. She was unique and alone._

_One day, when she was flying, people of her world came and hurt her wings. She couldn't fly away, and she cried to herself, grieving her broken wings. A stranger heard her crying and __kindly helped her up._

_The girl was amazed to see that the stranger was a boy with wings. They were many colors, __like butterfly wings. He had lived his entire life with wings, and had learned how to soar high in the sky without fearing the people of their world._

_The winged boy healed her wings. Over time, her wings became beautiful again. The girl was __afraid of flying, but the boy held her hand and taught her how to fly once more. There came a day when she was no longer afraid, and she flew high in the sky with the boy._

_The winged boy and girl kept flying higher and higher, until the people of their world could no longer see them. They say that the boy and girl flew together for the rest of their lives, growing old together. If you listen closely, you can still hear the flap of their magnificent wings. _


	17. Paper Cranes Flying Away

It is the last day of two hundred and seventy. I am in Mr. O' Connors' class, where I've stayed all afternoon. It's a warm, lazy Friday afternoon. May is sunny and pleasant, and Mr. O' Connors has his windows all wide open. I can smell the foreshadowing of summer on the breeze that dances past the opened glass.

When I came back to school after my struggle with Finn, word spread like wildfire about the fight in the bathroom. Stories varied in actuality and ridiculousness, a few even going as far to claim that I gave Finn a roundhouse kick or Kurt whipped out his ninja swords to finish off the fight. But almost all of the stories ended on the same account that Finn was defeated.

In my final days as a sophomore, I have become popular again. People I have never seen before will come up to me and congratulate me, and give me high-fives and hugs. It all seems ironic and shallow, that after months of despising me because of the rumors Finn spread they now flock to me as a hero. I don't ponder too long on it, though. I'm done letting the world tell me how to feel.

I have noticed that when I go to sleep now, there are no monsters growling softly at me to turn off the lights. They seem to have slowly disappeared one by one, until the last one finally vanished. Now I open my eyes in the night, and my ceiling is empty. Just a normal ceiling.

I have spent my final hours being a sophomore in Mr. O' Connors room. There's been kids in here all day, toiling away at the final touches on their essays. The bell finally rings, and the madness begins for the very last time.

Everyone is up in a rush. Chairs are pushed in for the last time with relish, feet walk excitedly around before being released to their lockers, voices are loud and boisterous and ready to start the summer with one more year under their belts. I listen to all of them, and smile softly to myself.

The sound of the bus's wheels hissing and their doors clamping shut as the last kids get on rise to my ears. I gaze out the window, watching as the long, yellow buses pull away for the last time. I can hear the excitement of the kids all the way from here. School is finally out.

Freedom for three long, sweet months has arrived at long last.

The school quiets. Only teachers are left, typing away at their computers, finishing up their last grades before packing up and congratulating themselves on another year well done. I stick around a little later, toiling on my essay that I've finished. The purpose to life finally came to me last night when I was on the phone with Kurt. I wrote it down immediately, and now it's finished.

I print it off the computer, and shut it off. Paper in hand, I approach Mr. O' Connors desk. He was sad today to see his kids go, but many of them promised to visit next year and others said they he'd probably teach their younger brothers and sisters next year. Everyone likes Mr. O' Connors. He's that teacher you never forget.

He looks up at me when I come to a stop at his desk. His eyes smile as he takes the paper from me.

"Thank you, Lucy."

"You know, Mr. O' Connors, you can call me Quinn. I go by my middle name, too."

Mr. O' Connors tries the name out on his tongue. "Quinn. Hmm. It has a nice ring to it." He smiles at me and places my essay along with the hundreds of others he'll be reading all night. "Finally figure out the purpose of life?"

I think for a moment. "Yes. I have."

He puts his hands on his hips and tucks his pencil behind his ear. I chuckle when I notice he's got a pen tucked behind his other ear. "When you write a great story and it becomes a bestseller, don't forget the little people, alright?"

He's smiling, so I assume he's joking at least a little bit, but then it's like he's being honest. He knows

I'll take my secret talent and show it to the world one day. It's a good feeling, to be believed in again.

I return his smile, feeling it touch my eyes. "I will dedicate my first book to you, Mr. O' Connors."

He glances down at my essay. I see his brows shoot up ever so slightly. He looks up at me again, eyes thoughtful. "It seems like you have still have a lot to say, Quinn."

I pull a chair up to his desk, ready to use the words that have been cooped up for so long. "I do."

* * *

_**August  
**_

* * *

Three hundred and sixty five days later, this is where I am. This is who I have become.

I was shaped this way by the World and the awful demons that thrive there.

I was broken by those demons.

A year ago today, He tried to destroy me. He opened me up and ripped me apart and stuffed someone else inside, stitching me up to resemble a person. There was a tear in my stuffing and sticky red blood. Even after he slid out I was in pain.

Then someone came and helped me pick up the pieces. I am a jigsaw puzzle, thousands of little colorful pieces of me scattered everywhere. Memories, bits of skin and bone, beliefs, dreams. He helped put me back together.

A year later, I am still imperfect. There are scars I will carry, memories of an unborn person, always glancing over my shoulder to see if the monsters have returned. Ten years from now, I will still be imperfect. Twenty, thirty, forty years from now.

But each day is a battle towards the Good. The hope that, one day, I will be able to find a mirror that reflects all of me, not just the bad parts. One day I will be able to laugh and not feel guilty. One day, I will be able to kiss and touch and become one with another person  
without the fear.

All of those things will happen One Day. But for now, it's just Today.

There comes a knock on the front door of the Museum. I hurry closer, push aside the darkness. Kurt's there. He is standing, brown hair ruffled by the summer sun and seasonal freckles dancing across his pale cheeks. His eyes smile wide when he sees me.

"Hi," he says.

"Hi," I reply automatically.

There's a small bouquet of flowers in his hands. They're checkered with butter yellows and lipstick reds. I've never been given flowers from a boy before. He carefully hands them to me, taking care not to drop them. "These are for you."

"Thank you. They're beautiful."

There's a pause. We're both new to this romance stuff. Finally a smile tugs at Kurt's lips. "Ready to go?"

I squeeze the flowers, feeling their petals brush my cheek like a butterfly's wing. "Yeah... now I am."

For the first time, in a long time, I'm thinking that just maybe, everything is going to be okay.

* * *

**Final Author's Note: **After almost two years, I have finally finished this story.

I cannot thank you enough for taking the time to read my story. I have had more fun than you can imagine rewriting this story. Thank you very much to the readers who stuck with me for this amount of time. I am so grateful for all of your words of advice and love. I love this story and it means a lot to me that there are others out there who love it too!

I hope that each of you have an amazing summer, wherever you are, whoever you are. Keep reading, keep writing, keep living.

~Sarafina


	18. The Final Words of Quinn Fabray

Quinn Fabray  
English, Bell 1  
5/31/11

When asked what the purpose of life is, I had no idea how to respond. How does one begin to  
answer the most rhetorical question mankind has ever encountered?

For the last four months, I have tried way too many times to sit down and write this essay. Every  
time I sat down, I still had no more idea what to write than I did the last time. I'd scribble down  
possible answers and begin to write, but each time they felt wrong and I had to crumple up my paper.

Today I have realized the answer to your question. What is the purpose of life? My answer:  
there isn't one.

Mankind has existed for a very long time. From the very first moment we could think, we asked questions.  
We want to know who we are, why we are here, who put us here, how we got here, and a million other  
things. We struggle with the concepts of creation, oblivion, birth, and death. The truth is that mankind asks  
these questions because they know there is no answer. They fear an answer, because the answer may  
not be what they want.

If we finally discovered the answer to the purpose of life question, we would have nothing left to say. It would  
destroy life itself if humans found out what our purpose is. Because the point of life is not to find out _why _we  
are alive; the point is to just _enjoy _being alive.

Being alive is one of the most precious, beautiful things in the universe. Life is a delicate thing- people can be  
killed so many ways. Hit by a train, a boat, a car, a plane. Crushed by a building, a tree, a wall. Poisoned by food.  
Cancer, disease, disability. Murdered by another person. Taking their own life. And these are just a handful of them.

Life should not be about always asking questions, since you could waste your life asking these things  
and never find the answers, because there _is _no right answer. The purpose of life is different to every  
person on the entire planet. But to me, this one single, little person in this little town on this little planet,  
the purpose of life is to _live it._

I am done asking questions. In fact, I'm done trying to answer them. Things happen in life because life is  
always moving and happening and existing. It can be hard on Earth, and it's funny to think that sometimes  
you need to stop and tell yourself to just live. But that is what I am doing.

I'm finished answering the question in this essay. I'm not going to write about the meaning of life any longer.  
I'm going to print this out, hand it in to my teacher, and go outside to live my life. I suggest you stop reading  
this, and do the same.


End file.
